GOP’s Bill Breaks with Bush on Oil Stockpiles

With voters clamoring about high gasoline prices, Senate Republicans unveiled energy legislation Thursday that echoes President Bush’s call for more oil drilling but would interrupt the administration’s efforts to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to unveil their own energy legislation next week that would likewise halt deliveries to the nation’s emergency oil stockpile, while also slapping the oil companies with a windfall profits tax.


With prices at the pump setting records again in Houston and across the nation, Senate Republicans want to resurrect proposals to allow oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to expand those areas offshore where producers can operate.

“This bill says that we can start taking advantage of the billions of barrels of domestic oil that we are not using and begin to reverse the cycle of dependence on foreign oil,” said Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The GOP plan also would promote use of coal by requiring the nation make at least 6 billion gallons of fuel annually from coal by 2022. And it would repeal a moratorium blocking the federal government from leasing acreage in the Rocky Mountain states containing oil shale deposits.

Houston Chronicle