ENERGY PACKAGE MOVES FORWARD

HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERS are fast-tracking legislation that would lift the longtime federal ban on drilling for natural gas along most of the nation's shorelines, open an Alaskan wildlife refuge to oil production, and make it easier to build new petroleum refineries and expand existing facilities. "The days between hurricanes Katrina and Rita painfully confirmed that U.S. energy production and infrastructure are too concentrated in one region of the country," House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.) said last week. But Democrats charged that Republicans were exploiting supply disruptions and rising prices by rushing to push through controversial regulatory relief measures for industry that Congress had rejected this summer when it passed a bill overhauling U.S. energy policy. On a mostly partisan vote of 27 to 16, the Resources Committee approved a Republican-drafted plan that would expand offshore drilling and open the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife ...