Firms warm to climate bill

Firms warm to climate bill

Apr 26 - Tulsa World

Oil companies including ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell PLC will back new climate-change legislation in the U.S. Senate, according to people familiar with their plans.

Exelon Corp., the biggest U.S. utility owner, also supports the bill, and CEO John Rowe will be on hand when the bill is presented at a news conference Monday, said Howard Riefs, a spokesman for the Chicago-based company.

Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., have worked for months to get big energy companies behind compromise legislation after a House-passed measure stalled.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips would not confirm its reported commitment to the legislation.

"We have not yet seen the bill so therefore it is premature for us to comment," company spokeswoman Nancy Turner said Friday.

General Electric Co. is among companies expressing interest while withholding judgment until the measure is in final form.

"From the little we do know, we believe it will be a step forward," said Peter O'Toole, a spokesman for Fairfield, Conn.- based GE, which produces equipment that generates one-third of the world's electricity.

Kerry said late Thursday that at least three of the five biggest oil companies will endorse the legislation, according to people with knowledge of the call. Kerry didn't identify the companies, they said.

The House version of the legislation would have established a cap- and-trade program for almost every part of the U.S. economy, with carbon emissions limited and pollution allowances traded on a market. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman compromise would start by placing carbon limits solely on electric utilities.

Oil companies would be given free pollution allowances that would expire by a certain date, after which allowances would have to be purchased, the people said.

The Edison Electric Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing the electric-utility industry, is also likely to back the measure, sources said.

"Shell believes that comprehensive energy and climate legislation is essential to meeting our growing demand for energy and that a national framework will help keep down the cost of doing business and provide the regulatory certainty that companies need," company spokesman Ted Rolfvondenbaumen said in an e-mailed statement.

The legislation is drawing criticism from an environmental organization, Greenpeace USA. The group opposes a provision that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases and also suspend carbon-trading programs in the states.

The issue is a "line in the sand for many in the environmental movement," said Damon Moglen, director of the Greenpeace USA Global Warming campaign. S

Originally published by KIM CHIPMAN & JIM EFSTATHIOU JR. Bloomberg News.

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