NEW YORK (Reuters) - After eight years of frustration under a Democratic president, energy industry executives are all smiles now that two former oilmen are running the country, and they are eagerly awaiting this week's energy proposals.
Since President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney took office in January, the energy industry has not only seen its political support grow. It has also gained more clout with consumers concerned that energy shortages are driving up their energy bills.
Once almost unthinkable, companies are preparing to drill in sensitive areas, stepping up coal production, and are even contemplating building new nuclear plants.
"Finally we have an administration and a public who sees we have a problem," Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Officer Robert Allison told Reuters.
"For the past ten years, no one listened or cared," said Allison, whose company is getting ready to start drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The U.S. public is increasingly concerned about the rising cost of gasoline, electricity and natural gas, especially with a power crisis in California in the headlines, analysts said.
The average U.S. retail gasoline price rose to a record $1.713 per gallon, the Energy Information Administration said on Monday in its weekly report.
Bush's energy proposals will emphasize tax incentives and streamlining federal regulations to produce more oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and hydropower. The recommendations will also include some conservation measures, but the president last week blamed record-high gasoline prices on the lack of new refineries and said conservation would not lower the prices.
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Cheney again blamed high U.S. gas prices on low supply, saying world oil prices were not to blame. He also said the Price-Anderson Act, which protects nuclear companies from unlimited liability, should be renewed.
More details will become clear on Thursday, when Bush's energy policy task force, headed by Cheney, releases its long-awaited report. The industry likes what it hears so far.
"Cheney and Bush are saying all the right things," said National Mining Association's vice president John Grasser.
GORE, GOING, GONE
Industry analysts said that just the change in rhetoric from the White House has given drillers, refiners, coal miners and nuclear power companies a stronger voice. This is seen as a more important development than some of the recent concerns expressed by major energy companies about the contribution their plants are having on global warming.
"Bush's energy plan will create more opportunities for growth and profit for all energy companies in the U.S.," said Deutsche Banc analyst David Wheeler.
Take for example liquefied natural gas. No new facilities were built in the past 25 years because of environmental restrictions, but that should change, said Wheeler.
Energy companies said they have the public's ear as people realize that energy does not come from a socket in the wall.
Nothing expresses this change better than support for nuclear energy, which analysts said is stronger than it has been in more than two decades.
"This is the brightest prospect for nuclear power since Three Mile Island," said Ken Rose, senior economist at the National Regulatory Research Institute, referring to the accident at a nuclear plant in 1979.
Although no new nuclear plants have been built in over 20 years, the industry is now trying to overcome public opposition and even running newspaper advertisements to improve its image.
But Rose warned new nuclear plants still face local opposition and are at least 10 years from being built.
Environmentalists are on the defensive. "We knew the administration would be run like a business," said Tyson Slocum, spokesman for environmental group Public Citizen. "But who knew it would be run as an energy company."
©Reuters May 15 2001 3:31PM