Senate Rebuffs White House On Petroleum Reserve

Tue. May 13, 2008


By a 97-1 vote, the Senate rebuffed the Bush administration today and approved an amendment calling for a halt of deposit of light sweet crude oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the rest of the year. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., was the lone opponent of the amendment, which backers said would moderate record oil and gas prices. It was approved as an amendment to a bill reauthorizing the federal flood insurance program, which also passed overwhelmingly. "Make no bones about it, this is not big energy policy," Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Pete Domenici said right before the vote. "This is one little thing we can do and I think we ought to go ahead and do it." Domenici said he changed his mind about filling the reserve in the last month, as oil prices shot up to more than $120 a barrel. Suspending the filling of the reserve "could have a chance of reducing the price a small amount," Domenici said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said it could reduce oil prices by as much as 10 percent. "It's a step in the right direction," said Dorgan, who sponsored a bill that echoes the amendment's call for suspending oil deposits in the reserve for the year unless oil falls below $75 a barrel. "Sticking oil underground is wrong at this time," he said. President Bush last month said that the 70,000 barrels of oil daily going into the reserve is not large enough to affect oil and gas prices. Bush wants to continue the Energy Department's plan to double the reserve's capacity. The Senate also considered another amendment, proposed by Republicans, intended to limit oil and gas prices by increasing domestic production, partly by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. That amendment was defeated 56-42 on a mostly party-line vote.

Republicans objected to a move by Senate Majority Leader Reid after the vote to move the petroleum refinery language as a stand-alone bill, but Dorgan said Democrats and Republicans will continue talking about that idea today. "It makes no sense not to do this" as a stand-alone bill that could reach Bush in the coming days, Dorgan said. He also plans to offer it Thursday in the Appropriations Committee as an amendment to the Iraq supplemental bill, if necessary. The House will vote today on a similar stand-alone plan to suspend the filling of the reserve for the rest of the year. That bill is expected to receive the two-thirds support necessary to be approved under suspension of House rules.

by Darren Goode

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