The House is scheduled to markup comprehensive energy bill legislation this afternoon. The legislation is similar to President Bush’s attempt to pass a comprehensive bill during his first term. The bill retains a liability waiver for manufacturers of the fuel additive MTBE which was one of the main sticking points that prevented the bill from passing in past years so it will be interesting to see how the issue plays out this time around.

However, new additions to the bill focus on giving federal regulators greater authority to approve construction of terminals for imported liquefied national gas. The draft bill would also create “refinery revitalization zones” to encourage construction of refineries in manufacturing areas with high levels of unemployment. In addition, it would allow the EPA administrator to waive clean fuel rules during “extreme” fuel supply emergencies. The clean fuel language could prevent states from forcing refiners to produce cleaner, blended fuels for use in those states. Refiners produce dozens of “reformulated” gasolines to comply with the regional and state clean air requirements and language in the bill calls on the EPA and the Energy Department to study changes to existing clean fuel rules with the idea of creating a more uniform nationwide fuel system.

The Senate is not expected to address energy until the summer.