One of President Bush's first initiatives upon assuming office nearly four years ago was the creation of a national energy policy. But a task force that was chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney, met behind closed doors and solicited input from major energy companies met with controversy, stalling action on an energy bill.

	This is one in an occasional series of articles leading up to November's election about economic issues being put forth by President Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry.

Now, with oil and gasoline prices soaring and natural gas prices following suit, energy is back on the front burner of this year's presidential race. And it is noteworthy that, all rhetoric aside, both the president and Democratic challenger John F. Kerry share some common ground.

Both tout energy independence and agree on some of the ways to achieve that; both want to build an Alaska natural gas pipeline; both want to provide tax credits for buying more fuel-efficient cars; and both want to foster greater use of clean-coal technology, building on government research that has focused on ways to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But when it comes to the dominant energy issue -- oil: how to get more of it, how to make better use of it and how to pay less for it -- the two sides' differences could not be clearer.

Bush wants to get more oil by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness preserve in northeastern Alaska spanning 19,000,000 acres -- the approximate size of South Carolina. He says that the drilling could yield 1 million barrels of oil a day for 20 years, from a 2,000-acre site.

Kerry opposes the drilling, both on environmental grounds and on the grounds that it will be ineffective. He and his supporters say that it may take 10 years for the drilling to produce any oil, and that even then, the output would represent only a six-month supply. "There is no way for us to drill our way out of this crisis," Kerry has said. "We have to invent our way out of it."

Indeed, both candidates promote innovation to varying degrees when discussing energy ways to improve the efficiency of America's motor vehicles. Kerry emphasizes the need to develop new automotive energy sources, such as hydrogen.

"Hydrogen has the potential to power our cars without pollution," Kerry said in an interview with AAA. He said he would jump-start the marketplace by fueling 50,000 federal government cars and trucks with non-petroleum fuels by 2010.

Bush hasn't committed the federal fleet, but he does want to provide $1.7 billion over five years for the development of alternative fuel technologies, including hydrogen and fuel cells.

But while the country waits for alternative fuel sources, cars and light trucks continue to consume 40 percent of the oil used in the United States. Kerry has said that he would reduce that usage by raising the government's fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars to an average 36 miles per gallon combined city-highway by 2015, up from 27.5 mpg now.

But that would not affect the legion of sport utility vehicles on America's roads. They are classified as light trucks, and therefore have a less-stringent requirement -- 20.7 mpg. The Bush administration last year approved an increase to 22.2 mpg for light trucks by 2007, a change it estimates will save about 1 billion barrels of gasoline over a 10-year period.

Both Bush and Kerry favor construction of a pipeline to funnel natural gas from Alaska to the lower 48 states. While crude oil prices are nearly double their level when Bush first took office, from just below $28 to more than $54 at the end of last week, the price of natural gas has been spottier, plunging during the 2001 recession but spiking in 2003 and in recent months..

Regardless of who is elected, expect your heating bill to go up this winter. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that Americans will spend 15 percent this year on heating than they did last year.

The candidates also agree on the need for nuclear power, although Kerry has not been as vocal about is as Bush has. The administration has pushed China to consider Westinghouse Electric Co. technology as that country weighs adding more nuclear power to meet soaring energy needs.

The two differ greatly on what to do with nuclear waste. The Energy Department under Bush has recommended that the country begin storing waste from the nation's nuclear plants in an underground facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., a site that is part of a former nuclear weapons testing area. Kerry has been vocal in his opposition to the move, in part because getting the waste to the Nevada site would require transport through many of the country's most densely populated areas.