US Senate rejects bid to encourage president to release from SPR

US Senate rejects bid to encourage president to release from SPR

Washington (Platts)--22Jun2005


The US Senate Wednesday discarded a bid to encourage the president to release
1-mil b/d of crude from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline
prices. Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat-New York), the amendment's sponsor,
said the measure would have broken "OPEC's stranglehold over" the world's
crude market. 

The non-binding measure would have called for the release of 1-mil b/d of
crude within 30 days of the energy bill's enactment and another 1-mil b/d for
30 days thereafter if crude oil and gasoline prices remained strong. Schumer's
amendment also would have encouraged President George W. Bush to "directly
confront OPEC and challenge OPEC to immediately increase oil production" and
to direct the US Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General to
"exercise vigorous oversight over the oil market to protect" US citizens from
"price gouging and unfair practices at the gasoline pump."

Meanwhile, the Senate passed, by unanimous consent, an amendment to help rural
drivers who do not have access to public transportation cope with high
gasoline prices. The amendment, presented by Senator Robert Byrd
(Democrat-Virginia), would allow workers to exclude from their taxable wages
their expenditures for gasoline, up to $50/month, if they carpool an average
of three weeks per month. Byrd said that the amendment would cost $123-mil and
that the Finance Committee had agreed to provide an offset for the measure
later Wednesday.

This story was originally published in Platts Global Alert
http://www.globalalert.platts.com

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