Debate on Senate Energy Bill Draws Fierce Opposition : Legislation: Stalled effort to cut back on foreign oil imports neglects conservation, environmentalists charge. Filibusters threatened.

The Senate began debating a major overhaul of the nation’s energy strategy Thursday but the long-stalled effort to cut back on foreign oil imports quickly ran into fierce opposition from environmentalists, who threatened a series of filibusters.

The product of months of fierce lobbying and committee-level debate, the sweeping legislation now before the full Senate aims for drastic reductions in America’s dependence on foreign oil through increases in domestic production of oil, coal and nuclear energy.

Charging that the bill neglects efforts to conserve energy, environmentalists, conservationists and a number of consumer groups have lined up against the Bush Administration and the oil industry in opposition to it. Their allies in the Senate are threatening to mount a series of filibusters aimed at killing the bill’s most controversial provision, which would open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

For its part, the auto industry is lobbying hard to defeat what will be an attempt by conservationists to cut oil consumption by mandating major increases in the fuel economy of vehicles.

It has been more than 10 years since Congress last tried to craft a comprehensive national energy plan. Only 10 minutes into the debate that finally opened on the Senate floor Thursday, it was easy to understand why: Not since last year’s marathon debate over clean air has a bill of such bewildering complexity cut so deeply across political lines, pitting regions and interest groups against one another.

While Thursday’s debate was only over a procedural motion on whether to move ahead with the bill, both sides came out with rhetorical fists swinging.

“This bill . . . is a monstrosity . . . , a stuffed turkey . . . , a highly political, narrowly ideological special-interest bill that does not have much in common with what the American people want,” Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) said in urging his colleagues to reject a motion to proceed with the bill that will be voted on today.

Angrily rejecting Wellstone’s arguments as misinformed, Energy Committee Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), the legislation’s chief sponsor, accused opponents of resorting to “terrorist-type” tactics to kill the bill. Standing next to an enlarged photograph of a burning Kuwaiti oil field, Johnston pointed to the giant column of flames and smoke and declared: “This is a graphic picture of our energy policy today.”

Proponents argued that the bill, which closely resembles the energy strategy that President Bush unveiled in February, is a balanced effort that will reduce projected imports of foreign oil by more than 6 million barrels per day by the year 2010 and give the economy a major boost by creating as many as 735,000 jobs nationwide.

Opponents contend that it is an industry bill that was “made in the boardrooms” and contains taxpayer give-aways to oil, nuclear and utility interests. They say that it would do little to encourage fuel conservation and could do untold environmental damage by opening the nation’s largest and most ecologically delicate wildlife refuge to oil exploration.

“This bill looks to the past, not the future,” Senate Environment Committee member Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said.

Baucus and Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.) were leading a bipartisan effort to keep the bill from coming to the floor or, failing that, to bog it down and ultimately bury it under an avalanche of as many as 500 technical amendments.

On the eve of today’s vote, environmentalists conceded that they may not have enough support to block the bill from the floor. But they were more confident that they will get enough votes to strip the bill of some of its more controversial provisions, such as drilling in the Arctic, after the debate gets under way.

They are likely to be aided, at least indirectly, by the prospect of a three-way fight over another controversial provision to set new mandatory mileage requirements for cars and light trucks. As written, the bill would raise the current average fuel economy standard of 27.5 miles per gallon to a new “maximum feasible” level as determined by the secretary of transportation.

Conservationists, however, favor a competing bill sponsored by Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) that would require auto makers to achieve specific increases in fuel economy of at least 40% by the year 2001.

Conceding that his bill probably cannot pass without stricter standards, Johnston has proposed a compromise that would raise fuel economy by 31.8% in 2006. But he is likely to be opposed both by the White House, which views the higher standards as unrealistic, and by environmentalists.

Other contested provisions would ease existing regulations to encourage the development of nuclear power and give large utility companies more freedom to expand their operations. The bill also tightens energy efficiency standards for new homes and government buildings and aims to promote the development of alternative fuels that are not based on oil by requiring their use in all federal and in large municipal and private fleet vehicles by the year 2000.