Power Play Could Have a Long Run

WASHINGTON —  California’s electricity crisis moves to center stage on Capitol Hill today.

But a Senate hearing dedicated to the “California Electricity Crisis and Implications for the West” is expected to be just the opening act in a long political production. The plot is not just about generating more megawatts of electricity; it’s also about building support for a variety of legislative and regulatory proposals designed to address the nation’s energy needs.

Energy experts, utility executives, power providers, and state officials from Idaho, Oregon and Washington are expected to testify before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee today on what went wrong in California, and how it is affecting the West.

The hearing is unlikely to produce any immediate federal help for California.

“People I represent think we’ve been doing a lot of heavy lifting for California already,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a committee member, said Tuesday. He vowed to oppose any effort to force his state to send more power to financially strapped California utilities without airtight protections to guarantee repayment.

President Bush’s chief economic advisor, Lawrence B. Lindsey, reiterated Tuesday the administration’s position that California’s electricity crisis is largely a problem that the state itself must solve.

Lindsey said in an interview that Washington is extremely to extend an emergency order forcing suppliers to sell surplus electrical power to the state beyond its expiration at midnight Tuesday. However, he appeared to leave the door open to extension of a companion order covering natural gas.

Lindsey asserted that administration officials are not being “free-market ideologues” by largely refusing help to the state. He even expressed frustration at the administration’s inability to find much that it can do quickly.

Lindsey had said previously that if the state asked, the administration would issue pollution waivers to allow older power plants, which are now fined if they operate, to come online during periods of peak demand. But he indicated Tuesday that the Clinton administration appeared to have already issued all of the waivers that are needed.

Lindsey said the Bush administration might be willing to consider certain kinds of temporary caps on wholesale electrical prices, but nothing like the extraordinarily tight lids sought by Gov. Gray Davis.

“A trade-off between some protection from extremely high prices and some very sporadic blackouts, which would be the product of any price cap, is probably reasonable,” he said. ‘On the other hand, a very tight price cap would not.”

Also in Washington on Tuesday, consumer watchdog Ralph Nader assailed the California congressional delegation for failing to come together and aggressively fight for federal price caps on wholesale power supplies.

“The delegation as a whole is not fully using its substantial influence,” Nader said, complaining that he had not received return calls from a number of California lawmakers when he inquired about their views on the power crunch.

Some members of the delegation are attempting to set up a meeting with Curt Hebert, the new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has refused to impose strict price caps on wholesale power supplies.

Today’s hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to be a launching pad for a new push by Chairman Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) to promote a pet cause: drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Senate Republican leaders are preparing next week to introduce a 250-page National Energy Security Act. The measure will contain initiatives ranging from tax incentives to spur new oil production and nuclear energy development to a proposal to open carpool lanes to lone motorists who drive alternative fuel vehicles.

The Arctic drilling provision is, by far, the most controversial. Wyden called the provision the “kryptonite” that could kill the bill.

“I think that they will find in a 50-50 U.S. Senate that they won’t be able to translate frustration about California into votes for an Arctic package,” Wyden said.

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Times staff writers Peter G. Gosselin and Robin Wright contributed to this story.