Subject: National Governors Association
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Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 13:00:15 -0700 (PDT)

Reporting from Providence Rhode Island......although the plenary sessions of the NGA summer meeting have not focused on energy issues, DOE secretary Spence Abraham did make a short presentation to the Natural Resorces Committee this morning.  He used only one visual, and it was pretty effective---very simple/one page.  The message was 175 Quadrillion BTU's will be the nation's energy needs by 2020, 48 could be met by conservation, 98 is today's supply (domestic and imported) which leaves 29 quads as the shortfall.  The last line showed that between 1991-2000, domestic supply had only increased by 1 quad. He was very well received by the governors (committee members attending were Vilsack-IA, Keating-OK,Geringer-Wy, Minner-DE, Johnson-NM, Hoeven-ND, McCallum-WI)

Governor Davis showed up for the end of Abraham's comments and did his normal personal pat on the back for how well his state has done in conservation and how they had many power plants on line.  He made a slightly disparaging comment about Wyoming/Cheney needing to get on the bandwagon for conservation, at which point Geringer got a bit testy and cautioned Davis to be "careful" about whether he wanted to get into that debate.

Most of the questions by the Governors to Abraham focused on transmission.  Abraham inidicated that federal eminent domain was intended as a last resort if the states can't get it done and that he is sensitive to the governors wanting local control.  Several Governors expressed their hope that they could get transmission issues solved on their own, and that if they did not, they were open to further "discussion" of having FERC help them.

After the meeting, Gov. Vilsack (chairman of the committee) and Gov. Keating (vice chair) held a press conference, along with next year's committee chairs,  Hoeven/ND and Minner/DE.  They presented the NGA comprehensive energy policy resolution--NR-18 (I had forwarded it on to most people on this list last week) and talked about how much there was that both dems and republicans had agreed on in the document.  The reporters asked several questions on the eminent domain....both Vilsack and Keating again stated that they wanted to see if states could get the job done and if not, they were open to further discussions with the feds.

I'll be here thru tomorrow.  Page me or leave me a voice mail if you want to discuss in more detail.