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The Obama administration is considering releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help Americans facing a spike in oil prices as a result of unrest in the Middle East, Obama Chief of Staff William Daley said Sunday.
The administration is considering all options when it comes to preventing the U.S. economy from backsliding as a result of recent increases in oil prices.
"The issue of the reserves is one we're considering. It is something that only is done -- and has been done in very rare occasions. There's a bunch of factors that have to be looked at. And it is just not the price," Daley said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I think there is no one who doubts that the uncertainty in the Middle East right now has caused these tremendous increases in the last number of weeks. ... All matters have to be on the table when you ... see the difficulty coming out of this economic crisis we're in and the fragility of it," he added.
Oil prices have skyrocketed in recent weeks, climbing to nearly $105 per barrel on Friday from about $90 one month ago. That puts the price of a gallon of gas at a national average of $3.50, according to AAA.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 727 million barrels of oil. The caverns are designed as a storage facility to tap domestic reserves in case of a national emergency. In 2005, President Bush authorized the Department of Energy to approve loans of 13 million barrels of oil to refineries in Louisiana whose supply was cut off after Hurricane Katrina.
Three Democratic lawmakers last month urged the president to make the oil available ahead of the summer driving season, but the White House said at the time that it was monitoring the situation in Libya and not taking action yet.
Daley said Sunday that uncertainty in the Middle East, which has seen a cascade of revolts and protests in OPEC nations, has led to great uncertainty in the markets.
"The president is extremely concerned about this," Daley said. "There is also not only uncertainty in the Middle East, you have an increasing demand worldwide as the economic difficulties of the last three years begin to improve."
1 comments:
Back in the 1950’s, many of us found ourselves gawking at a new invention called television. There was one show that came on everyday at 4:00 P.M. Buffalo Bob was the master of ceremonies and his sidekick was a mute clown named Clarabelle who communicated with a honker horn. There was also the “peanut gallery” which was a set of bleachers occupied by a group of preschoolers cheering every time Clarabelle honked his horn. The star of the show, however, was a marionette named Howdy Doody. The way it worked was that Howdy Doody spoke to the television audience while Buffalo Bob lead the cheering section in the peanut gallery. Every time H.D. finished making a point, Buffalo Bob would say “Isn’t that right boys and girls of the peanut gallery?” Clarabelle would then honk his horn twice and the studio kids would shout “Yay!” Of course, we never found out who was pulling the strings. Let’s see; a speech making puppet with a cowboy and a clown leading a programmed cheering section; sounds a lot like modern-day politics.
Accordingly, as I have watched the events unfold vis-à-vis the “war on terror”, and the “road map to peace”, I feel like I’m still watching the Howdy Doody Show. In Gaza, Hamas had taken control of the Palestinian Authority by popular vote. Then the U.S. government continued to push Israel to travel down “peace road” with the leaders of Hamas because they had become the elected officials of the “Palestinians”. The PLO has been gone for about five years and Hamas is still in power; American style democracy in action with Jimmy Carter still heralding his approval and Obama still promising to work harder toward bringing peace between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East.
Wait a minute! Aren’t the Hamas terrorists the ones who perpetrated all of the suicide bombings in Israel and murdered thousands of Jews? Yes. Didn’t the Israeli military take out several successive leaders of Hamas with Helicopter attacks without protest from the puppeteers? Yes. Didn’t the prior Bush administration and the current Obama administration condemn Hamas for its acts of terror? Yes. And now the world community is still congratulating Hamas for its participation in the peaceful political process and condemning Israel for defending herself.
I feel like I’m still going insane. But it must be alright, because Howdy Doody says that everything is as it should be, the buffalo man is prompting us for agreement and the dumb clown just gave us two blasts on his honker horn.
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