| Zusammenfassung: | In the aftermath of the destruction wrought on the US energy patch, especially oil and gas production and refining, by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the failure of the long awaited Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT 2005 or Act) to address the country’s energy challenges is all too apparent. Even before the storm, the energy bill was characterised more as a grab bag for special interests than as the kind of ‘comprehensive’ energy strategy needed to address long-term core American economic, environmental and security interests. At the signing ceremony in early August, President George W. Bush noted, ‘because we didn’t have a national energy strategy over time, with each passing year, we are more dependent on foreign sources of oil.’ This observation is true enough. But the Act, which is not expected to stimulate major increases in domestic oil and gas production or to stem in any significant fashion the growing energy demand, will do little to shift the trend line referred to by the American president. By September, the folly of the energy bill hit home with voters. In the wake of hurricane induced fuel outages, gasoline lines, and a huge spike in residential natural gas prices, the new legislation inside the energy bill seemed ludicrously inadequate. As a result, politicians, rather than pointing to the bill’s achievements, implicitly admitted failure by rapidly introducing additional measures in Congress as if to immunise themselves from the bill’s clear inability to address the gasoline and diesel fuel crisis at hand, let alone the coming winter heating cost crisis.
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