Bush urges Americans to get Congress to allow drilling

Americans should contact Congress and tell their elected representatives to open up a part of the Alaskan wilderness and the area off the country’s coast to oil exploration, President Bush said Wednesday.

{mosads}“I fully understand why Americans are concerned about gasoline prices,” Bush told reporters. “But I want them to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways and they ought to write their Congress people about it.”

The president said Americans should tell Congress to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Outer Continental Shelf, as well as push for an increase in oil shale exploration.

Bush argued that the Democratic Congress has “refused to budge” on these issues.

“It makes no sense for — to watch these gasoline prices rise when we know we can help affect the supply of crude oil which should affect the supply of gasoline prices,” Bush stated. 

Both Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive presidential nominees, oppose drilling in ANWR. However, McCain recently shifted his stance on offshore drilling in the face of average gasoline prices of $4 per gallon. The Arizona senator now argues that it should be up to the states whether to allow oil exploration of their coasts.

Bush argued that “ultimately, of course, we’re going to transition away from hydrocarbons. But we’re now just in a transitional period, and we need more oil to be able to do so.”