Washington (Platts)--1Oct2009/550 pm EDT/2150 GMT

The US House of Representatives on Thursday approved in a 308 to 114 vote a fiscal 2010 spending bill that would provide $27.1 billion for a variety of Department of Energy programs.

October 1 is the beginning of the new fiscal year, but Congress passed a stopgap spending bill on Wednesday that will fund the federal government at fiscal 2009 levels through October while Congress completes its annual appropriations process.

The Energy and Water Appropriations bill represents an agreement between House and Senate negotiators. It must now be approved by the Senate before President Barack Obama can sign it into law.

The measure includes a Senate-passed provision that would bar companies that supply refined fuel to Iran from securing DOE contracts to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation's emergency crude oil stockpile.

The bill also would fund on advanced energy research "hub" at DOE, and allow the department to use already-appropriated funds to open two others. The Obama administration had proposed creating eight such hubs, and requested $280 million in its fiscal 2010 budget request for these centers for basic science, technology and policy research.

Appropriators in both the House and Senate complained that the department had provided too few specifics on the hubs, however, and worried they might overlap with the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and Energy Frontiers Research Centers, which are responsible for conducting research into cutting-edge energy technologies.

The bill does not replenish $2 billion which was barrowed from DOE's renewable energy loan guarantee program in August to fund the popular "Cash for Clunkers" rebate initiative.

When the money was re-appropriated for the program, leaders in both chambers of Congress said they planned to replace it as soon as possible.

The bill includes roughly $197 million for DOE's Yucca Mountain repository project and did not issue any directives to the department on how it should proceed with the repository project Obama's administration has already said it wants to terminate.

The bill report accompanying the conference measure notes that $5 million of the allocation for the Yucca Mountain project would be used to establish the blue-ribbon commission. It added that all guidance provided to the program in the House and Senate reports is superseded by the conference agreement.

That eliminates language in the House report that stated the blue-ribbon commission would be funded only if the repository planned for Yucca Mountain were among the waste disposal options evaluated. Also eliminated was language in the Senate report that directed DOE to suspend collecting the nuclear waste fee from nuclear utility customers. Those customers now collectively pay more than $700 million a year into the Nuclear Waste Fund to bankroll the DOE repository program.

The bill also would fund DOE's Nuclear Power 2010 new reactor program at $105 million. The DOE-industry cost-share program is aimed at the near-term deployment of new reactor designs in the US. The nuclear power industry has said it would need $121 million in federal funds in FY-10, the program's last year, to complete work.

The department's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office would receive $2.2 billion, up $314 million from fiscal 2009 levels. The Office of Science would receive $4.9 billion, an increase of $131 million compared to current levels.

The committee provided $672 million for fossil energy research and development, $54 million more than the administration requested. Much of that increase would go to unconventional fossil fuels research.

--Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com