"Washington Political Pandering With The Oil Reserves"

The United States is halting shipments to its strategic oil reserve for the second half of the year after Congress passed a bill calling for the suspension, the Energy Department said Friday.

As oil prices hit new highs near 128 dollars a barrel, the Energy Department announced it had not signed a six-month contract for deliveries to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world's largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil.

The decision affects up to 13 million barrels of crude oil, the department said in a statement.

President George W. Bush, who had resisted lawmakers' calls for the suspension, will not veto the bill, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told AFP.

"The president has indicated he doesn't believe halting the moderate fill of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will have a meaningful impact on prices," Stanzel said.

"Congress has indicated this is something they want to try and the president will not veto this legislation."

Energy Department spokeswoman Megan Burnett told AFP that the US fills its reserve by about 70,000 barrels per day, an amount that "doesn't have an appreciable action on prices."

She said the 70,000 barrels of crude represents less than one-tenth of one percent of global daily consumption.

The decision affects deliveries of crude oil beginning in August and continuing through December.

The bill, which passed both the House of Representatives and Senate by veto-proof margins, suspends the filling of the reserve as long as the price of crude oil remains above 75 dollars per barrel.

Separately, House speaker Nancy Pelosi called the suspension "a critical first step for America's families, businesses and our economy.

"It makes no sense to buy oil and put it in the ground when prices are at record highs," the opposition Democrat said.

The inventory as of Friday was 702.7 million barrels, providing a 58-day safety net in case of supply disruptions. The SPR has a capacity of 727 million barrels.

The federally owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush raised the reserve by more than 30 percent.

Sixty nine percent of Americans see gasoline prices as a serious problem for their families but only 41 percent favor a temporary repeal of the gasoline tax as proposed by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, a poll released on Thursday said.

In the Quinnipiac University Poll, 57 percent of respondents said they were cutting back on household spending because of high gas prices; 61 percent were driving less and 39 percent had changed summer vacation plans.

However, those surveyed consider a summer gas tax "holiday" a bad idea by 49 percent to 41 percent.

Republican McCain and Democrat Clinton proposed suspending the tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents on diesel fuel for the summer.

The other major candidate, Democrat Barack Obama, dismissed the idea as a gimmick.

     Two weeks ago Senator Hilary Clinton proposed a summer gas tax holiday paid from the billion dollar windfall profits of the big oil companies that Senator Barack Obama and all the political pundits that support him condemned as a gimmick and a "political pandering" for votes. Now the US Senate and House in an election year , with President Bush's approval, have passed legislation to temporarily suspend oil gong into the Federal Reserves, a move which will have absolutely no effect on the price of gas. Where is the cry of "political pandering" for votes by the Obama campaign now? Why doesn't Obama point out this legislation as another example of "Washington politics as usual"? Maybe because it isn't to his political advantage to condemn a specific "gimmick" of the Bush Administration, instead of speaking in grandiose generalities? Are the remaining uncommitted superdelegates paying attention?

tags: obama  clinton  takebackamerica  politics  2008  president  us  power  federal oil reserves  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit