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Show Enorgy policy hearing drnoo light turnout A scant ten persons turned turn-ed out for the energy policy hearings Monday night, including in-cluding representatives of the COUNTY NEWS and the Deseret News. The meeting was conducted conduct-ed by Rep. Dewain Washburn, Wash-burn, District 72, and Rep. Ray Nielsen, District 69, with assistance from J. Chrlstensen, a member of the Utah Petroleum Executive Execu-tive Commission, and Vee Sharp, legislative coordi-naotr. coordi-naotr. After a short introduction on the purpose of the meeting, meet-ing, Chrlstensen summarized summa-rized the energy situtatlon from World War II to date. He pointed out that much of the expected energy reserves expected to be tapped by the VS. were still not available. avail-able. The Alaska pipeline still has not delivered its first barrel, he said. Exploration off of Southern California has suffered serious setbacks, set-backs, and drilling for the huge estimated reserves off the Atlantic coast is yet to start. Nuclear, geothermal, petro -chemical (oil shale and gasification) and solar, which was expected to produce pro-duce 20 percent by 1975, at present accounts for only two percent of our energy requirements. At the time of the OPEC (Arab) embargo of 1973, the VS. was dependent upon imported im-ported oil for only thirty percent of domestic needs. Today, Chrlstensen said, "We're dependent on Arab oil for 44 percent of domestic domes-tic needs nd it is getting worse each year." In the absence of a national nation-al energy policy, the State of Utah, at the urging of Governor Rampton, is working work-ing on its own energy policy. It's believed that if the state develops a plan for developing develop-ing its own energy resources, resourc-es, and it is workable within with-in regulations which are mostly environmental that Utah will be able to go ahead with development of energy resources. Utah has more energy resources re-sources than maybe anyoth-er anyoth-er state.. Utah has resources resourc-es in oil, oil shale, coal, geothermal, uranium, and could be a leader in solar energy. The purpose of the hearing hear-ing was to discuss the "Energy "En-ergy Policy Report" of the Joint Legislative Commit- tee. on Energy Policy. The report covers the policy statements, rationale and recommendations to be presented pre-sented to the Utah Legislature Legis-lature in January. It is expected ex-pected that out of this legis -lature will come bills setting set-ting forth an energy policy. Mr. Sharp went over the highlights of the report for those present, and the re- port was discussed. Generally, Gener-ally, those attending were i favorable to the recommen- . j datlons. Interest centered around geothermal development in Beaver County. The recent oil -gas leasing in the western west-ern part of the county and the natural gas reservoir penetrated pene-trated between Adamsville and Greenville with two water wells. Interestingly enough, Rep. Washburn brought the group back to reality by asking if they would prefer to have a tax cut of $5-6 dollars this year or should the legislature legis-lature fund some of the recommendations rec-ommendations of the report. He estimated to carry out the recommendations the legislature would have to appropriate $15 million dol- lars. Nielsen said that while the committee favored the Green River Corridor plan, it had turned down all efforts ef-forts to mandate that all development be in the corridor. cor-ridor. He said that efforts would be made to encourage encour-age oil, coal, and petrochemical petro-chemical industries to locate lo-cate in that area which is less encumbered by environmental en-vironmental problems and also where water and re-1 re-1 sources are available. |