Bush again calls for drilling in Alaska wildlife preserve

By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices reaching yet another new high today, President Bush reiterated his call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and defended his policy of adding crude to the nation's emergency oil stockpile.

But Bush declined to jump into the political fray over whether the federal government should give motorists a tax holiday on federal excise tax on gasoline.

"One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference.

"If Congress is truly interested in solving the problem, they can send the right signal by saying we're going to explore for oil and gas in the U.S. territories, starting with ANWR," Bush said. "And we can do so in an environmentally friendly way."

Lawmakers have blocked exploration in the refuge, Bush argued, despite Energy Department estimates the area could yield a million barrels of oil a day — enough to make 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel.

"That would be about a 20 percent increase of ... crude oil production over U.S. levels, and it would likely mean lower gas prices," Bush said. "And yet such efforts to explore in ANWR have been consistently blocked."

Bush argued that opening more domestic areas to drilling "sends a signal to the world that ... we're going to try to become less reliant upon foreign oil."

At the same time, Bush defended his administration's strategy of continuing to inject oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, despite record oil prices, arguing the amount of oil going into the stockpile is too small to affect oil prices.

"We're buying, at the moment, about 67,000 to 68,000 barrels of oil per day" to fill the reserve, Bush said. "World demand is 85 million barrels a day. So the purchases for the (reserve) account for 0.1 percent of global demand, and I don't think that's going to affect price."

Bush refused to say whether he would support a proposal backed by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York to relax the 18.4-cent per gallon federal tax on gasoline.

"What I'm not going to do is jump right in the middle of a presidential campaign," Bush said. "We'll let the candidates argue out their ideas."

But Bush said he would consider the suggestion.

On the economy, Bush declined to call the current slowdown a recession, even though many economists say the nation is already in one.

"You know, the words on how to define the economy don't reflect the anxiety the American people feel," Bush said. "The average person doesn't really care what we call it. The average person wants to know whether or not we know that they're paying higher gasoline prices and they're worried about staying in their homes."

Asked if he thought government figures due out Wednesday on the nation's gross domestic product for the period from January through March would show the country was indeed in a recession, Bush said, "I think they'll show we're in a very slow economy."

On other subjects, Bush:

• Said he believes the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan is making strides in tamping down "a very resilient enemy." Bush said that he believes the NATO-led mission in the country is succeeding. "We're making progress, but it's also a tough battle,"Bush said. "

• Declined to openly criticize former President Carter for his meetings last week with representatives of Hamas, the Palestinian group the State Department considers a terrorist organization. "Anybody can talk to whomever they want, but I want people to understand the problem is Hamas," said Bush. "Foreign policy and peace is undermined by Hamas. ... That's the reason I'm not talking with them," he said.

• Spoke about intelligence that was released alleging that Syria and North Korea were cooperating on a clandestine nuclear reactor. He said the intelligence was made public to step up pressure on North Korea to end its own nuclear program and to pressure Syria to stop destabilizing the Middle East by aiding insurgents in Iraq and Hamas in Lebanon. He said it was also meant to send a message to Iran.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This dead horse again?!?!?

Nothing like taking advantage of a situation to funnel more easy money into the pockets of oil companies, because that's the only people in the world drilling in ANWR will help. It'll be at least 10 years before we could see a drop of ANWR oil going to U.S. refineries. In that same time, for less money, we could both remove a million barrels of oil per day worth of demand through efficiency, and add a million barrels of oil per day worth of equivalent energy through renewable solar and wind.

And there is NO SUCH THING as "environmentally friendly" oil production. There is oil production that isn't as polluting as in the past. But no oil company has ever left an environment better than it found it.

I'm sure he'll cave right in and sign this ridiculous bill when it hits his desk. It's right up his ally to be this short sighted.

Here's how suspending the gasoline tax will work:
-Gasoline prices are set by supply and demand. Prices have gone up until demand has been brought in line with supply. If we remove some of the cost, demand will rise to fill the gap until the price has to rise to bring it back down. Which will immediately eat up the $0.18 a gallon tax break. Gas will be back to the same price within a week.

-Instead of the government getting that money, it will instead go to the oil companies and foreign countries.

-The gas tax goes to fund the highway infrastructure. So taking away that funding will leave the government to fing another sourse of money to pay for roads, bridges, and the rest of the infrastructure that makes driving possible. I'm guessing we'll will just borrow it from China.

The average citizen does not understand the global market forces that drive the price of gasoline. Some think that it's just greedy oil companies arbitrarily setting a price while others think the problem can be solved by just asking OPEC to increase production.

This plan is right up the alley of the average dumb citizen who will be suckered into thinking our government is doing something about a looming energy crisis that most of them are not even aware of.

Sigh,..he just don't get it...

The funny thing is he's right in that quote. It's just that drilling in ANWR won't substantially increase oil production. And if it does take 10 years like AEN says, it probably won't even be enough to return global oil production to present numbers.

The problem is the demand, not the supply. As stated before, we need to cut back and find alternative uses, not blame our supply needs on the rest of the world's production.

We seem to already be drilling into my bank account, why not drill into Alaska too... It's a lot bigger than my bank account and will surely produce more oil...

6g65dd
You don't get it either.

We need to sign an energy declaration of independence.

Where are you Ben?

Add an SUV tax, you waste, you pay.

No I do get it. Some people like AEN want to focus on the demand. People like Bush want to focus on the supply.

I've got a CRAZY idea...

How about we focus on BOTH!!!

Drill in Alaska AND focus on alternative fuel.

I focus on both supply and demand. I just want our efforts on the supply side to benefit us more than just a couple of years. And all the oil in ANWR wouldn't last the U.S. more than a few years. Then we'd be right back in the same boat.

I'd much rather take the investment and put it toward energy that will be usable 1,000 years in the future.

AEN is dead right on this issue.

Yes but Alaska IS doing something about the supply.

Work on SUPPLY *and* DEMAND. Reduce dependency on foreign oil by INCREASING supply and REDUCING demand.

Hey AEN, what's your take on synthetic fuels? For reference:

Video about Oil Problems in the US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Liquid_Fuels_Program

I know the Germans pretty much ran their military on the stuff after we had them cut off from any outside supplies of oil, so it definately works. It's basically turing coal into a synthetic liquid fuel by combining the carbon with hydrogen to make long chain hydrocarbons such as kerosene and gasoline.

It has a few drawbacks, such as being hugely polluting. Theres' something like a 3 fold increase of CO2 emmisions from coal liquifaction vs. buring the equivalent oil. The other concern is can we scale it up to meet any real percentage of our demand? The 16 million barrels of oil we import a day is a HELL of a lot of oil. Saudi Arabia can't even get their production up over 12 mbd.

I only see America trying this if oil goes ballistic ($200+ in the next few months) or if we're suddenly cut off due to some embargo from OPEC.

We really need to get over the Business As Usual mentality here. We are simply not going to find a way to fuel the current vehicle fleet with anything other than imported oil. What we need is a zero emmissions vehicle mandate with some teeth. Tell auto companies that in order to do business with the U.S., a certain percentage of the vehicles they sell must be zero emmissions. Let them figure out how best to meet that criteria. We can fuel those vehicles with electricity or hydrogen or compressed air or whatever each manufacturer decides is best with energy produced right here.

I guess that makes it DOA with a democratic controlled congress. How bad would gas prices have to be for us to consider this?

I agree but increasing the supply whether it be via Alaska, the Gulf, or synthetic oil could only help with prices...

Sounds like a recipe for economic disaster... These "zero emmissions" cars would be higher priced so the only way auto makers would sell them is to pass the cost on to other vehicles which would hurt them when competing with foreign auto makers.

That's a long term goal. We need short term measures too...

RE: Hydrogen, that uses a ton of water right? Remember all the water supply problems in Georgia? What would happen if we ran our cars using water. It would cause major water shortages in many areas, especially during a drought.

Just an observation -- the mandate AEN speaks of would apply to foreign manufacturers, so I'm not sure how it helps them in the competition. Foreign vehicles are already priced higher due to the tumbling dollar, so the foreign automakers -- who would also have to pass the costs of THEIR ZEVs to other vehicles -- would be at a decided disadvantage.

Add to that the fact that they are behind the curve NOW, and it seems to me it would vastly help domestic automakers.

FWIW, hydrogen cars don't use water, they emit water. Typically, the hydrogen is made from natural gas or other fossil fuels. The key to the technology is changing that to a more efficient (read: cheaper) process.

You are correct. The ZEV mandate would include foreign and domestic makers. It's my guess (unfortunately) that Detroit could continue to get it's clock cleaned. The old saying "when the government increases fuel economy standards, Japan gathers it's engineers and Detroit gathers it's lawyers" in absolutely true.

As for hydrogen, we can use electricity to crack it out of water. And a little water makes an awful lot of hydrogen. And the last time I looked, we had oceans full of the stuff. And we're sitting on both the Saudi Arabia of solar and wind power here in the U.S. Use that to make hydrogen to fuel the cars.

But I think battery technology will win out over the hydrogen fuel cell. Hydrogen is simply a way to store electricity for use at a later time - a battery. Once battery technology allows a person to drive as far as they wish to drive, it'll be a moot point. Batteries will be far cheaper than fuel cells, and flash charging will let people recharge in less than half an hour.

I think the holy grail of a sustainable energy economy in the U.S. would be hydrogen based, but it's many moons off. I imagine hydrogen being produced in vast amounts in the sun belt from solar and from wind in the midwest. This hydrogen could be piped all over the country like natural gas is today. It can then be used in either commercial scale fuel cells to make electricity for cities, or piped directly to houses for consumer sclale fuel cells to power homes direclty. EVs will run off of this grid. Energy problem solved.

Doesn't Iceland power practically the entire country off hydrogen reactions using geothermal sources with all of their hotsprings and volcanic activity?

Actually, removing taxes establishes a lower supply curve. The market would establish a new equilibrium with slightly lower prices but increased consumption of oil.

Exxon still hasn't paid for the Valdez Alaska spill of 89.

That shit's still in court.

Hell, we won't even take away their tax breaks after they just earned over 10 billion dollars in the last 3 months.

This erks my shit.

We need to drill here and NOW. It will take awhile for it to come on line, but oil prices are all abt perception and speculation. Yes, demand is high, and it will get even higher, but the market will favorable react to a new America, willing to start drilling and then soon to be free of our world neighbors crud. Energy independance will strike panic in OPEC and the terrorist, I mean kindly neighbor to our South. We can alter the balance of world quantities by drilling in the Gulf, Anwar and the huge Montana and Dakotas. Drilling off shore 20 miles or more will not ruin anyones view of the great wide open waters. Like it or not, OIL is the here and now and no amount of environmental panic over it is going to change that. Alternatives will come on line but quit frankly we're a century from them taking over. 100 years is a long time. Alot changes in that kind of time. Look at where America was just 100 years ago. Europe and the entire world has transformed tremendously in that period and so will we again in the next. Drill now and isolate your enemies from dictating your nation as in Energy.

You are delusional if you think any combination of ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bakken Shale output will equal anywhere near the 16 millioin barrels of oil we import every day.

At best, these deposits will stop the current U.S. production decline. But they will in no way offset world production decline. And since oil is a commodity sold on the world market, it's total worl production versus total world demand that determines the price of oil. If America produces 2 mbd more oil, but the world as a whole produces 4 mbd less oil, the price still climbs.