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Show CONGRESS WOEFULLY DIVIDED ON NATURAL GAS Two years and more after his inaugra-tion, inaugra-tion, President Reagan has finally mustered the courage to ask Congress for legislation that would decontrol all natural gas prices over the next three years. His proposal would permit natural gas producers and pipeline companies to negotiate new contracts and renegotiate old ones without becoming subject to government price ceilings. Under the Reagan plan long-term, high-price contracts could be scrapped at will after Jan. 1, 1985. And there would be a ceiling on consumer prices through Jan. 1, 1986 that would bar all increase other than those based directly on inflation. WHITE HOUSE LOGIC The Administration insists that its combination of consumer protection, incentives in-centives for domestic producers, and economic use of all our energy resources is logical and will make for more abundant abun-dant energy. The Energy Department calculates that the Chief Executive's natural gas price decontrol package will actually bring down domestic prices of this commodity by 10 cents-30 cents per 1000 cubic feet in the first year of its operation. Position of the Reagan White House is that current natural gas pricing problems pro-blems flow not from such easing of con-' trols as has already occurred but from past and current regulatory excesses that ought to be abolished. White House claim is that such excesses penalize consumers con-sumers over the longer pull. TIMING A FACTOR President Reagan was an avowed advocate ad-vocate of natural gas price decontrol long before he entered the White House. Time and again he has said that such control is the only sure way to achieve lower relative prices for residential consumers. con-sumers. His delay in follow-through was apparently not due to lack of conviction but to respect for the extent of congressional congres-sional opposition. During the President's first two years in office, economic conditions and some political considerations were such that there was practically no possibility that Congress would come to agreement on any measure quickening the pace of already scheduled natural gas price decontrol. The odds aren't much better now but they are better. Demand for natural gas is well below levels set only a few years ago and every dip in the price of oil amounts to an increase in-crease in the price of natural gas. Further Fur-ther shrinking in the competitive leeway for boosts in natural gas prices appears to lie directly ahead. And that could split the opposition to the President's deregulation plan. FORMIDABLE FOES But that opposition is numerically strong, especially in the heavy gas-consuming gas-consuming areas of the Northeast and Midwest and it has the support of a number of consumer organizations who are not sold on the idea that deregulation may help consumers in the end. Foes of the Reagan plan argue that his primary purpose is to decontrol "old gas" (that flowing from wells that have been in production since before April 1977). That, all by itself, is an issue on which emotions run high on Capitol Hill. WHAT THE PROSPECTS ARE' Senate and House committees have already held some hearings on the Reagan plan and other natural gas matters, mat-ters, and it is important that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Commit-tee favors the White House measure in the main. In the House, however, committee consensus con-sensus will be much harder to obtain and it could take many weeks, even several months, before a decision is reached and that could go against the President. So the outlook for natural gas decontrol is still only a shade brighter. In the end, Congress may not be able to agree at all, at least in 1983. |