Dems to Obama: Tap oil reserve

Gasoline prices are on a dramatic rise, and everybody's got advice for the White House.

No surprise, Republicans are reviving their "Drill, Baby Drill" catcalls from 2008, but liberals in Washington are getting nervous and asking President Barack Obama to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a potential panacea for escalating gasoline prices.

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Picking up on the themes of a speech he gave Thursday at the University of Miami, Obama used his weekly radio address Saturday to remind Americans of his view that if prices at the pump rise as expected in the coming months, ?there are no quick fixes to this problem, and you know we can?t just drill our way to lower gas prices.?

He also warned that rising gas prices could hurt any economic recovery. While there is ?no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight ? what we can do is get our priorities straight, and make a sustained, serious effort to tackle this problem,? Obama said.

The potential danger to the economy ? and the president's reelection chances ? have liberals urging the White House to unleash the SPR now, before it's too late. The national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline was $3.65 on Friday, according to AAA.

?Selling reserve oil on the open market is the one step that we know will reduce oil and gasoline prices in the immediate term,? said Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. ?Every time we sold reserve oil it has lowered oil and gasoline prices. We know it works.?

Three House Democrats ? Reps. Ed Markey, Peter Welch and Rosa DeLauro ??also are urging Obama to open up the spigots.

?This most recent run-up in prices is primarily the result of fear driving oil markets, not an actual loss of supply,? they wrote in a letter to Obama, adding that it would "send a message to Iran that we are ready, willing and able to deploy our oil reserves.?

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner suggested the SPR is a possibility. "There's a case for the use of the (reserves) in some circumstances, and we'll continue to look at that and evaluate that carefully," he told CNBC Friday morning.

Obama himself has been mum on the SPR; the president didn't mention the reserve during his energy speech Thursday in Florida or in Saturday's radio address.

President George H.W. Bush tapped the reserve during the first Gulf War; Congress ordered sell-offs during the 1990s for budgetary reasons; George W. Bush used the SPR after Hurricane Katrina; and most recently, Obama in June sold 30 million barrels from the reserve to address concern of the loss of Libyan oil on the global market. By then, roughly 140 million barrels had been lost to the market since disruptions began. By comparison, there was a shortage of 38 million barrels after Hurricane Katrina struck, the last time the SPR was tapped.

When Obama tapped the SPR last June, administration officials made a point of distancing the connection to gas prices ? underscored by the fact that by the time of the announcement, gas prices had declined 45 of the previous 49 days. Critics pounced at the time, saying it was politically motivated and that there was not a global emergency that warranted the sale.

Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=24229c592e489aff547b4cbf7d758a8d

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