Washington (Platts)--14Jan2008

The senior Republicans on two House committees Monday asked the
Government Accountability Office to conduct an inquiry into the marketing of
carbon offsets.

"With sales expected to increase steeply in coming years plus the
mounting potential for government mandates that would intensify such activity,
we are troubled by the potential lack of integrity in the offering of such
services and products," Representative Joe Barton, Texas, ranking member of
the Energy Committee, and John Shimkus, Illinois, ranking member of the
Government Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to GAO.

These seem to be "essentially good faith transactions, in which all the
burden is on the customer to sort out the honest promoter from the cheats,"
Barton and Shimkus said. "To our knowledge, no proven safeguards against fraud
and deception presently exist, making the carbon offset market a ripe target
for hucksters."

Carbon offsets "provide a potentially valuable way for individuals to
make direct personal commitments to environmental quality," the congressmen
said. "We don't want carbon offsets to become the 21st century version of
snake oil and patent medicine."

--Gerald Karey, gerry_karey@platts.com