The congressional "supercommittee" searching for at least $1.5 trillion in politically palatable deficit cuts this week takes up a question that energy-industry players of all stripes have mulled for months: Can any tax overhaul pass muster with both parties before the 2012 election?

While many lawmakers cheer for their colleagues on the bipartisan 12-member panel tapped by last month's debt-limit deal to thread the needle of tax reform, even those who hope for the best acknowledge that the supercommittee's time to pinpoint a package of tax changes is short. Moreover, the oil industry is laying down markers against any attempt by Democrats to tinker with its tax benefits exclusively.

"Our companies have been very clear that we're more than happy to be part of a broader tax reform discussion in which all of these provisions would be on the table," American Petroleum Institute Vice President Marty Durbin told reporters Thursday.

Durbin's group is ramping up an already-active lobbying push for the supercommittee to eschew what he called the "wrong choice" of the White House, which continues to pitch a rollback of oil and gas tax breaks to help pay for a $447 billion jobs bill. That suite of tax benefits may well come to the fore during Thursday's hearing of the 12-member debt panel, but tax changes for the renewable power and ethanol producers also could be on the docket as its members hear from the chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

In a 2009 report on the "extensive variety" of federal tax expenditures for specific energy sectors, JCT aides frankly acknowledged that policy on the issue is "criticized for lacking well defined objectives and for lacking coordination among provisions having similar objectives."

"Some argue that the simultaneous existence of tax preferences for the fossil fuel industry and for renewable energy production represents an incoherent government policy," JCT wrote in its report. "Others have noted that the incentives for renewable energy and conservation are not themselves designed in a coordinated way to produce the most efficient or equitable subsidies for renewable energy and conservation."

Of course, even supercommittee members remain unconvinced that the fundamental tax overhaul many lawmakers seek can be attained before November 2012, let alone the late October deadline for any proposal by the debt panel to receive an all-important score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Even the prospects for agreement on generating budget savings through taxes may be slim, especially after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) nixed that option Thursday.

"Yes, tax reform should include closing loopholes -- not for purposes of bringing more money to the government, but because it's the right thing to do," Boehner said Thursday in a much-watched economic speech. The Ohioan acknowledged in that address that while it is "probably not realistic to think" that the supercommittee can tackle sweeping tax changes, it "can certainly lay the groundwork" for future progress.

Boehner's insistence that the supercommittee not look to raise new revenue through taxes could put the kibosh on early hints from at least one GOP debt panel member, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, that such an option is on the table. But any push to generate new money from the oil and gas industry is likely to draw Democratic opposition too, as oil-patch Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) indicated in their cool response to those portions of the Obama jobs plan.

Schedule: The hearing is Thursday, Sept. 22, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.

Witness: Tom Barthold, chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.