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ALBUQUERQUE — Both President George Bush and Senator Pete Domenici pointed the finger at Democrats last week for blocking domestic oil and gas production that they say would have prevented the current high fuel prices being endured by the American public.
During his press conference on Tuesday, Bush said:
One of the main reasons for high gas prices is that global oil production is not keeping up with growing demand. Members of Congress have been vocal about foreign governments increasing their oil production, yet Congress has been just as vocal in opposition to efforts to expand our production here at home.
They’ve repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge].
And in his press release Thursday about proposed Republican legislation that would increase domestic oil and gas exploration and drilling, Domenici added that:
…had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving over 1 million barrels a day from Alaska. The amount of oil in ANWR is enough to supply New Mexico for 222 years.
Bingaman responded to Bush from the floor of the Senate on Thursday, saying that President Bush’s remarks were not only "very partisan," but not factual.
He elaborated that Congress was required to pass the bi-partisan Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 because of the Bush administration had actually removed a large section of the Outer Continental Shelf from oil production in 2001. According to Bingaman:
Ironically, Congress was required to pass that law because of steps that were taken early in the Bush administration. In her first year in office, in 2001, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton cut the size of the scheduled Outer Continental Shelf lease sale in the area by 75 percent. So with the stroke of a pen, the Secretary of the Interior, in 2001, put off limits over 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and over 1 billion barrels of oil from an area that had been proposed for leasing by the Clinton administration.
So while, undoubtedly, a politically popular stance for the Bush administration in Florida when this action was taken by Secretary Norton, this was hardly an action that was intended to enhance oil and gas production in the country.
Bingaman also said that large areas of the Outer Continential Shelf are still off limits not just because of congressional moratoriums but because of moratoriums put in place in 1990 by the first President Bush. Noting that "presidential withdrawals" cover approximately 574 million acres of the OCS, making them unavailable for drilling, Bingaman said that the "current President Bush could exercise real leadership in this area, if he wished to, by eliminating these Presidential withdrawals that were first put in place by his father."
Bingaman also said that opening ANWR now would do nothing to alleviate the current high gas prices, as the production would not come online for at least ten years.
There are a known 14 billion recoverable barrels of oil in the outer continental shelf, versus a suspected 10 billion barrels in ANWR.
The Independent spoke with representatives of both Domenici and Bingaman to shed light on what seems to be a partisan tit for tat about domestic oil and gas production.
Domenici spokesperson Matt Letourneau said that Bingaman didn’t give the whole story. He first noted that while a president can’t overturn congressional moratoriums, Congress can overturn presidential moratoriums, implying that Congress could have overturned the moratorium imposed by Norton in 2001 at any time.
Letourneau went on to explain that in 2001 a particular area was scheduled to be opened in the Gulf of Mexico, but that the Bush administration blocked the opening because he agreed with opposition to the drilling in Florida. But, Letourneau added, “times change" and, accordingly, Domenici backed opening the area in 2006. And, he pointed out, Bingaman actually opposed the 2006 Act.
Bingaman spokesperson Jude McCartin said in response that overturning presidential moratoriums is not a simple act for Congress to undertake. In this case, she said, the 2006 act of Congress finally opened up a wide swath of the OCS for exploration that had been blocked by the Bush administration. She also elaborated on why Bingaman opposed the 2006 Act:
Senator Bingaman introduced a bill in 2006 that was modified and reduced significantly, included a revenue sharing provision for five coastal states nearby. The original bill provided for drilling 100 miles off shore, but the final bill limited exploration to 125 miles offshore.
This took an enormous section off the table, essentially putting under moratoria 2.9 trillion feet of cubic gas by pushing the drilling back from 100 to 125 feet. It also gave approximately one third of the revenue to five coastal states. Energy production from drilling that far out should be considered a treasure of the nation, not of states on the coast nearby. For these reasons, Senator Bingaman opposed the bill.
It’s expected that Senate Democrats will introduce a competing bill to increase domestic oil and gas production this week.
