The House last month approved its version of energy legislation.

President Bush Friday urged Congress to send him a final energy package by Aug. 1.

"To make sure this economy continues to grow and the entrepreneurial spirit is strong, our country needs to have access to affordable, reliable and a secure supply of energy," Bush in a speech to the National Association of Realtors.

The president said he wished he could just order gasoline prices lowered, "but that's not the way it works." Bush said the root cause of high pump prices "is that we're consuming energy faster than we're producing it."

Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Energy Committee met privately for months to draft the bill.

Friday, the panel released part of its energy legislation involving coal, electricity, hydrogen and certain nuclear power issues that are generally agreed upon.

The full committee will meet next week, then finish writing the bill during the week of May 23. Its goal is to send a bill to the Senate floor for a vote in late June.

"We have worked through a major number of issues," said Alex Flint, the panel's senior Republican energy adviser.

NO ANWR, MTBE IN DRAFT BILL

The draft Senate bill will not contain the language in the House legislation that would open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. In March, a simple majority in the Senate voted for ANWR drilling, but the chamber is pursuing the plan through a separate filibuster-proof budget bill.

The draft bill also leaves out a provision in the House bill that protects oil companies from product liability lawsuits for making the water-polluting gasoline additive MTBE. "I'm not sure there is a compromise on MTBE," said Flint.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, has insisted a final energy package must shield oil firms from the MTBE lawsuits. The White House has yet to express its views.

Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans last year opposed the MTBE provision, which effectively killed the bill.

Also missing from the Senate bill is the House's plan to boost ethanol production to 5 billion gallons a year. Flint indicated lawmakers would likely try to amend the Senate energy bill to have a similar ethanol requirement or a bigger target.

The draft Senate bill does have provisions to:

* Direct the president to reduce US oil demand by 1 million barrels a day by 2015;

* Increase the capacity of the US emergency oil reserve to 1 billion barrels, up from the current 700 million barrels;

* Impose reliability operating standards on utilities to protect the US electric grid from blackouts;

* Authorize $50 million over five years for rebates to consumers who buy energy-efficient appliances;

* Extend tax credits to companies that generate electricity by wind, solar or geothermal energy.

The Republican chairman of the Senate's Energy Committee, New Mexico's Pete Domenici, and the panel's top Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, also from New Mexico, expressed confidence the chamber would complete an energy bill this year after several years of failed efforts.

"Both of us recognize that America faces critical energy needs, and we both know that America must update its laws to meet those needs," Bingaman said in a statement.