Weyerhaeuser joins push for U.S. climate bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Weyerhaeuser Co, a timber developer and home builder, has joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of companies and moderate green groups pushing for a climate bill, the organization said.

WEYERHAEUSER (WY.NY)s chief executive Dan Fulton said that forest fibers are one of the best resources to store carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

"Whether we can make full use of this potential depends on legislative guidelines currently being debated in Washington, D.C.," Fulton said in a release.

Weyerhaeuser's joining comes during a time of change for U.S. CAP, which has about 30 companies including General Electric Co and energy companies Shell Oil Co and Duke Energy.

Last month Caterpillar Inc and oil companies BP and ConocoPhillips dropped out of the group. A BP spokesman said then that the company feared that ideas in previous climate legislation would increase oil product imports and the closure of U.S. refineries.

Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent, are crafting a bill that would not take the exact approach of legislation approved by the House of Representatives in June and a Senate committee in November.

Details have begun to emerge on what they are putting together. But it faces an uphill battle amid opposition from lawmakers in fossil fuel rich-states.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Julie Ingwersen)