The week ahead: House GOP to begin work on infrastructure, drilling package

House Republicans will begin moving legislation this week that would fund infrastructure reforms with revenue generated from expanded oil-and-gas drilling.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that Republicans will likely attach language to the package aimed at overturning President Obama's decision to reject the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

The House Natural Resources Committee is expected to approve three bills Wednesday that make up the drilling component of the package.

The infrastructure and drilling package is a top priority for Boehner, who has vowed to bring the legislation to the House floor quickly.

While the package is highly unlikely to pass the Senate or be signed into law by President Obama, it will give Republicans an opportunity to continue pummeling the administration over drilling, even as the White House is positioning expanded oil-and-gas production as a top policy priority.

The bills would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling require oil-and-gas leasing off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts while removing restrictions in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and require commercial leasing for oil shale projects in Western states.

Also this week, House and Senate panels will examine a final report by a federal commission that recommends a revamped strategy for nuclear waste policy.

Among other things, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future recommends new efforts to develop one or more permanent geologic disposal sites and the creation of a new independent body to manage nuclear waste.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear testimony Thursday from the commission’s co-chairmen, former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hear testimony from the commission's co-chairmen Wednesday.

There are several other energy-related hearings this week.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear testimony Tuesday from Howard Gruenspecht, the acting administrator at the Energy Information Administration, on the United States’s and global energy outlook for 2012.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing Monday on offshore drilling in Cuba and the Bahamas and the United States’s readiness to respond to a spill.

The House Science Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on EPA’s research on the pollution of groundwater from a natural-gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Republicans have taken aim at a preliminary EPA report that found evidence of apparent groundwater contamination in Wyoming from fracking. Paul Anastas, assistant administrator at EPA’s Office of Research and Development, will testify at the hearing.

On Friday, a House Science Committee panel will hold its second hearing on “Fostering Quality Science at EPA: Perspectives on Common Sense Reform.”