Energy: Dimming Chances for Carter's Bill

A compromise on gas prices and oil taxes proves elusive

He called it the moral equivalent of war, but President Carter's battle against energy waste seems to be winding up the moral equivalent of Pickett's Charge. Carter's energy bill is not dead yet, but its vital signs are fading. Congress adjourned last week for its ten-day Lincoln's Birthday recess, leaving the measure comatose in a House-Senate conference committee and the nation not much closer to a comprehensive energy program than it was when Carter first unwrapped his plan last April.

Of the complex package's 113 items, two have caused all the problems. One seeks to extend federal price controls to natural gas that never leaves the state where it is produced (only gas piped across state lines is now regulated), but would raise the ceiling by about 19%. The increase would give producers more incentive to explore for new fields. The other section would increase the price of domestically produced crude oil by some 63% over the next three years through a federal tax on producers. This would bring prices to world levels set by OPEC and thereby discourage consumption.

Though both provisions slid easily enough through the House, the Senate called for total deregulation of gas prices and rejected the oil tax, leaving it to a joint conference committee to thresh out a compromise. The committee has been stymied on the natural gas question and by the fractious and squabbling performance of its Senate members. As a result, it has not even got to the crude oil problem.

The committee's dilemma is how to satisfy Senate forces led by Louisiana Democrats Russell Long and Bennett Johnston, who insist on a free market for natural gas, and Carter, who has repeatedly vowed to veto any bill that abruptly decontrols gas prices. The problem is complicated by another Senate bloc, this one led by Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum and South Dakota's James Abourezk, both of whose states are heavily dependent on natural gas; they therefore demand that a federal lid be kept on gas prices. Democrat Henry Jackson, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has been struggling for more than a month to cobble together a compromise deal featuring phased-in decontrol and higher controlled prices in the meantime, but so far he has been unable to find majority support among his Senate colleagues on the joint committee for any formula.