Could the fight over Keystone be the end of the line for energy legislation this Congress?

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources panel’s new chairwoman, Lisa Murkowski, is already laying out an ambitious agenda to try to open new areas for oil and gas exploration, buttress the power grid and implement new energy efficiency policies. What’s not clear is whether lawmakers will have the stomach for it after an an extended floor debate on the proposed pipeline and a raft of other energy amendments.


“Who knows? But, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t get. You don’t work for it, it’s never going to happen,” the Alaska Republican said recently.

Many Democrats have groused that Republicans chose to pick a fight over Keystone as their first energy issue instead of taking up what the Energy panel’s new ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), has referred to as a “21st Century energy policy.”

But the climate change amendments that Democrats hope to tag onto the Keystone bill that are designed to unnerve moderate Republicans, and the fiery rhetoric from liberal stalwarts like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), could mean the messaging battle precludes the chances for major energy legislation to pass.

And that has some lawmakers predicting that the window of opportunity may be short — adding even more pressure to the Keystone battle.

“Well, this is probably the chance to do it, they’re not going to want to bring energy up, I don’t think, alone,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who is offering an amendment to the Keystone bill to install a federal renewable electricity production mandate. “Energy just has so many tough votes for everybody, I think this is the time to do energy.”

It won’t be easy to find a middle ground between the Republicans — and a handful of Democrats from oil and gas states — and the bulk of the Senate Democrats who have little trust in the oil and gas companies. That was exemplified by Warren, who at an Energy panel meeting on Keystone this month said she thought the priorities of the Republicans were wrong.

“Who does this new Republican Congress work for? Foreign oil companies or the American people?” she said. “Today, their first priority is to advance a pipeline that means a whole lot to an army of well-paid lobbyists and a whole lot to a giant foreign oil company. … I didn’t come here to do favors for TransCanada.”

Still, there is a precedent for Murkowski’s ambitious effort. In 2007, energy legislation was pieced together between the two parties after a then-new Democratic majority in the House quickly dispensed with its messaging exercise that pressed for ending oil and gas tax incentives and setting up a climate change committee.

After that grandstanding, the 2007 energy legislation emerged “that was put together with Democrats and a Republican president who at that point weren’t on the best of terms, in a similar situation as now,” one Senate Democratic aide said.

“There is at least a glimmer of hope … that some type of energy package could get put together that could pass here and get signed by the president,” the aide said. “That being said, the differences between how the Congress felt in 2007 and how it feels in 2015 are pretty night and day.”

Still, Murkowski’s hope of moving a four-titled energy bill that would address supply, infrastructure, efficiency and accountability is a effort that could customarily take a whole Congress or more.

“This is going to be aggressive. This is going to take some work. But I don’t think any of us are afraid of that,” she said.

Among the most contentious issues likely to be included is overturning the four-decade-old ban on exporting U.S. crude oil, a plan that Murkowski raised a year ago. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has sought to tie lifting the export ban to the Keystone bill, though some GOP leaders — and even the oil industry — are reluctant to press the issue so quickly.

“I’m listening to the discussion about it. We’ve got people who are very much in favor of it — Texas, of course,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the Senate’s third-ranking Republican. “But I’ve got to look at the issue a little more closely.”

To be sure, the White House veto threat hanging over the Keystone bill could mean that the Senate’s amendment debate is largely theater, rather than an indicator of whether the two parties can legitimately work together on energy proposals.

Murkowski, who also controls the subcommittee that oversees Interior Department and EPA spending, said she isn’t worried that the Keystone debate will become a poison pill that kills any chance for the Senate to move ahead on efforts such as speeding permits for liquefied natural gas exports, finding a long-term plan to storing nuclear waste and other debates.

“Most of us are just ready to engage in other issues beyond Keystone,” she said. “We recognize that there’s more to an energy debate than just this, and so let’s have this conversation now.”

Republicans, however, aren’t likely to let Keystone go without a prolonged fight, and they have promised to attach the pipeline to upcoming spending bills — a tactic that could be repeated for other Republican priorities, such as undermining EPA regulations.

Across the Capitol, House Republicans are planning to package together their own energy agenda, and will try to coordinate with the Senate GOP on addressing electricity reliability, infrastructure permitting and cybersecurity. And like Murkowski, they want to move something broader than a series of one-off energy bills, a House Energy and Commerce GOP aide said.

But the House Republicans are also planning actions that are sure to draw opposition from the White House and many Senate Democrats, including undermining EPA’s carbon rules for power plants and insisting that Nevada’s Yucca Mountain become a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, a project that Sen. Harry Reid has successfully blocked for years and is likely to be shot down by the White House.

“We’re unconcerned with vetoes, can’t control them,” House Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus said, adding that restoring funding for the Yucca Mountain project is likely to be part of broader bipartisan talks on nuclear fuel storage.

Murkowski’s effort to shepherd a broad energy package is certainly worth the effort it will take, according to former Sen. Byron Dorgan, but even narrow, non-controversial energy bills have stalled in the Senate recent years. For that reason, he suggested lawmakers take up an issue they could coalesce around, like the bipartisan energy efficiency legislation from Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) once they get past the current Keystone fight.

“Begin moving with easier pieces of legislation first … and then build from there,” he said.

Murkowski signaled that there are plenty of items she may take up piecemeal.

“My goal is not to say that everything that comes to the committee is going to get wrapped up in this big box and we’re going to put a bow on it,” Murkowski said. “Too hard.”

For example, bipartisan legislation that would speed up permitting for liquefied natural gas exports will be the subject of a hearing later this month. And unlike with the veto threat hanging over the Keystone debate, with liquefied natural gas exports, “we’ve worked hard to cooperate with the administration on this, and I think we’ve got a proposal that the administration is going to endorse,” Murkowski said.

Other hearings in the coming weeks may touch on electric grid innovation, offshore development and revenue sharing and critical minerals.

Murkowski is also promising far greater oversight of federal agencies. She wants to “get back to the practice” of bringing in agency heads to testify before the panel “regularly … not just once when the budget is presented.”

Murkowski has had her share of fights in recent years with public lands agencies — including the Interior Department, which has rejected her long-running efforts to build a road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. And Murkowski has also highlighted an effort first championed by former Sen. Tom Coburn to cull what he pointed to as wasteful spending at the National Park Service.

“We’ve got budget issues that we face and just kind of pushing the same programs with increased or decreased funding levels isn’t a responsible way to operate,” Murkowski said. “So I want to give our subcommittees encouragement to pursue some of these oversight hearings.”