President will sign strategic oil bill

The White House said Monday that President Bush will sign legislation passed last week that will halt the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The president has long maintained that the measure will do little to alleviate record-breaking gas prices, but White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the president would not stand in the way of the will of Congress on the issue.

{mosads}Stanzel said the president has not changed his mind on what he sees as the ineffectiveness of the measure, but he saw the “overwhelming numbers” of lawmaker who voted for the bill.

“The president doesn’t believe it will have a meaningful impact because it has been demonstrated in the past it hasn’t,” Stanzel said.

The Department of Energy announced last week that it would suspend filling the reserve — shortly after Congress voted to pass the measure. Stanzel said DOE “took that step proactively.”

The bill passed the Senate 97-1 and the House 385-25, indicating that a veto could easily be overturned.

The president has said repeatedly he thinks the reserve should continue to be filled in case of another terrorist attack or international incident that would make the oil deposit critical to national security.