Michele Bachmann
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Rep Bachmann calls for more oil drilling in the United States
You may feel a quiet rage if you're tempted dwell on Big Oil's profits as you fill your tank to the tune of $4 a gallon. But Congresswoman Michele Bachmann argues you should redirect that anger at the folks who sit under the Capitol dome in Washington DC. "Congress is the problem. Congress put us in this mess," Rep Bachmann told reporters Monday. She summoned the media to a Sinclair service station in Woodbury to say we could cut prices in half, all the way to $2.00 per gallon, if only the government would get out of the way. "We don't have a famine of energy," Bachmann declared, "We have a wealth of energy. Congress has just made it illegal to access this wonderful resource." Bachmann has joined other Republicans on Capitol Hill touting a bill known as the "No More Excuses Energy Act." It would open up the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling, and it would pave the way for more off-shore exploration in the continental shelves surrounding the US. "In order to get back to $2 a gallon there is only one solution," Bachmann explained, "It's to explore here, explore now, so Minnesotans can pay less." When asked how soon that new drilling would translate to $2 per gallon, Bachmann suggested it could happen in four years. Bachman asserted the very news that Americans are looking for more news at home could ease the pressure, by curbing speculation by commodities futures traders. Democrat's response Bachmann's likely DFL opponent in the upcoming election, Elwyn Tinklenberg, called it an political gimmick. "I suppose the response should be that, well I can give us $1.75 a gallon gasoline in three years! But that's just irresponsible." The former state transportation commissioner told reporters in Saint Paul that's it's not just a simple matter of upping the supply to meet the growing demand. "The Saudi's have added 300,000 a barrels a day to the supply," Tinklenberg said, "Now they're talking about adding another 500,000 barrels a day. It's had no effect whatsoever on the price of a barrel of oil." Tinklenberg said the most optimistic experts estimate it would take at least seven years for that new American oil to hit the market, and even all of the nation's untapped reserves would still amount to only a small percentage of the world supply. He warned that concentrating on exploration of new oil off America's shores and in the Alaskan wilderness will only take the focus of conservation, altenative fuels and efforts to reduced driving through mass transit. "All of those things can have the effect of reducing consumption, and if we reduce consumption of oil we will see the prices start coming down." He said if more drilling in this country were really the answer to the energy crisis, the Bush Administration would've made it a priority before now. "It's only going to produce greater dependency on oil, greater dependency on foreign oil, and ultimately higher and higher gas prices." Commuter angst And yet Bachmann's message may play well in her 6th Congressional District, where people are feeling the gas price crunch acutely. The district stretches from Saint Cloud on the west to Stillwater on the east, taking in the northern and eastern suburbs, all places inhabited by people with long commutes. "I've had to look at alternative ways to get to work," Jeff Carlson, a Bachmann supporter who appeared at the news conference remarked, "It's just too expensive for me." Carlson said he drives 32 miles one-way to get to work, and he's getting pinched professionally too because he works in the automotive industry. "Our family income is above the Minnesota average, and yet in our family we have to make those decisions every day." The high cost of driving, he worries, will reverberate through Minnesota's tourism and entertainment sectors as well. Tinklenberg said if Bachmann were truly interested in cutting gas prices, she would've supported price-gouging legislation and a new windfall profits tax for oil companies. But she voted against those measures, while supporting tax credits for oil and natural gas exploration. "She's supporting continuing the tax incentives for the oil industry, $17 billion a year, at a time the oil industry is making record profits." But Bachmann contends any effort to tax oil companies will only backfire on the consumers. "Taxes are passed through, that's what businesses have to do, so it will be the American people that will pay and the price will continue to shoot up at the pump." Sierra Club weigh in The Sierra Club also criticized the notion of expanded domestic drilling as the cure for the energy crisis. "Clean renewable energy sources and making our cars go farther on a gallon of gas are the best ways to reduce consumers' costs now and in the future," the Sierra Club's Michelle Rosier told KARE 11. "Instead of wasting time on dead-end drilling for small supplies of oil, Congress should be focusing on things that would make a real difference." Rosier, the government relations coordinator for the Sierra Club's Northstar chapter, said drilling in the ANWR would only lower fuel prices by about a penny a gallon years from now, based on the US Energy Department's own estimates. "We can't drill our way to lower gas prices," Rosier said, "The US consumes 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we sit on only 3 percent of the world's supply."
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