Keep an eye on Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) as the Senate climate debate lurches along.

The climate and energy bill that three senators – John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) – are crafting could include at least two big provisions that the New Mexico Democrat has a history of opposing.

The first deals with how to handle money – possibly lots of money – generated through expanded offshore oil-and-gas drilling that the bill is expected to promote. Environment & Energy Daily (via the New York Times) reported Friday that the latest draft will give coastal states a nice cut of the leasing and royalty revenues from oil-and-gas development in federal waters off their shores.

The Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s three nominees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Friday – including William Magwood, who had come under fire from activist groups.

The nominees were confirmed by unanimous consent rather than a roll call vote.

Magwood headed the Energy Department’s civilian nuclear technology program until 2005 and then became an industry consultant. The Project on Government Oversight and anti-nuclear groups had opposed Magwood, alleging he is too close to the nuclear industry to be an independent regulator.

Twenty environmental groups jointly said Friday that they like what they’ve seen thus far of the Senate climate and energy plan that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are crafting.

The joint statement from the groups is a signal that a large swath of the environmental lobby is willing to accept industry-friendly concessions – which could include measures such as expanded offshore drilling and preemption of state climate laws – if they pave the way for first-time limits on greenhouse gas emissions nationwide.

But at the same time, the groups caution that “legislative details are important, and are not settled yet.” The statement follows Kerry’s meeting Thursday evening with a subset of the groups. Here it is:

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) issued a report Thursday that accuses the regulators of botching their job on medical nuclear radiation exposure. 

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) wants a decade-long delay before manufacturing plants and other industrial facilities face greenhouse gas emissions limits, but the emerging Senate climate plan would instead begin phasing in limits in 2016.

While Levain said yesterday that he’s not thrilled with that aspect of the plan Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are crafting, he didn’t exactly throw down the gauntlet.

“It’s not the time frame I support,” Levin told reporters in the Capitol Thursday afternoon. “I assume that when a bill is introduced, it will have a lot of features to it, and that is going to be one feature that I don’t think goes far enough.”

Al Gore, on his website, flags this passage in Mitt Romney’s recent book No Apology:

“I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.”

Gore writes: “We can have disagreements about the solutions to this crisis, but we need to acknowledge fundamental truths. The science proving the existence of the climate crisis is not in question. That is where our debates about policy need to begin.”

Romney, a potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate, and Gore certainly disagree on solutions. The former Massachusetts governor, who failed to secure the 2008 GOP White House nomination, has bashed cap-and-trade, which Gore favors.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hopes to make a decision next month about whether to approve the long-delayed Cape Wind project off the Massachusetts coast.

But opponents of the wind power project are already looking past that. This week they informed Interior and Massachusetts state officials of plans to file a lawsuit against the project under the Endangered Species Act, reports the Cape Cod Times and Boston Herald.

The New York Times has a detailed piece about the increasing number of companies – including Russian and American firms – looking to build small, basically off-the-shelf nuclear reactors.

If a large collection of environmental groups is worried about the direction of Senate energy and climate legislation, they didn’t show it publicly Thursday evening.

High-level officials from 10 or so groups met with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for roughly 1.5 hours in his Senate office.

The meeting came a day after Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) met with a cross section of industry trade groups about their upcoming bill – a measure that’s expected to include several industry-friendly concessions as the senators seek traction for their uphill effort this year.

A few comments by the very liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Thursday afternoon illustrate the tricky task before Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) as they try and cobble together a climate and energy bill.

“The difficulty that Senator Kerry or anybody has is we don’t have 60 votes to pass a strong global warming bill that moves away from fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions,” Sanders told reporters in the Capitol. “It is a very conservative institution and we don’t have the votes.”

“The choice is, as I suspect Senator Kerry is wrestling with, is whether it is better to do something or nothing,” he added.