Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Through the Ages By Paul Jenks

1803
President Thomas Jefferson negotiates the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and ushers in a long political saga over how to manage the great new expanses of land.

1816
Congress creates the Public Lands Committee, and Ohio Sen. Jeremiah Morrow (Democratic Republican) becomes its first chairman. It is one of the Senate’s original standing committees. For the next 193 years, only two Senators from Eastern Seaboard states will serve as chairman of the committee or its successors.

1831
Alabama Sen. William Rufus King (Jacksonian), who later served as vice president under President Franklin Pierce, leads the committee as a debate between how to distribute public lands roils 19th-century politics. Eastern Seaboard lawmakers favor selling the land to raise money to pay debts, while Western lawmakers favor generous land grants to settlers...

It continues with similar summaries and ends with:

2001
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) becomes chairman of the committee for the first time and alternates the chairmanship with fellow New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici (R) until 2007, when Democrats retake control of the Senate and Bingaman takes over the gavel. The committee is recognized for its collegial and relatively nonpartisan processes.