Washington (Platts)--18Dec2007
Warning the US faces an "intolerable" situation over energy security, the
top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday said energy
and the environment should be the top issues for candidates for president in
the 2008 election and should continue to receive urgent attention from whoever
succeeds President Bush.
"Whoever is sworn in as president in 2009 must elevate energy security to
the status of a core national goal and must directly engage all the American
people in the solution," Senator Richard Lugar said remarks prepared for the
Brookings Institution in Washington.
"The president must be relentless," the Indiana Republican added. "He or
she must be willing to stake the reputation of the administration on
politically difficult breakthroughs that meaningfully contribute to US energy
security. The president must be willing to have his or her administration
judged according to its success or failure on this issue."
Lugar said Democratic and Republican candidates so far have "split along
party lines on most energy issues." Republicans, he said, generally reject
government intervention in markets and favor increased oil drilling, while
Democrats often take strong environmental positions that appear to disregard
the continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels throughout the world.
"We find ourselves in a situation that should be intolerable for a
superpower and for a nation with such high economic expectations," Lugar said.
"We maintain a massive military presence overseas, partly to preserve our oil
lifeline. One conservative estimate puts US oil-dedicated military
expenditures in the Middle East at $50 billion per year. But there is no
guarantee that even our unrivaled military forces can prevent an energy
disaster."
Lugar, a strong advocate of biofuels, said the next president should "use
every power" to make competitively priced biofuels available throughout the
US. This would require multiple elements, he said, including ensuring that
virtually every new car sold in the US is a flexible fuel vehicle capable of
running on E-85 fuel, that at least a quarter of US service stations have E-85
pumps and that ethanol production be rapidly expanded, especially production
from biomass.
--Bill Loveless, bill_loveless@platts.com
|
