Issa said that the problem was that Obama was trying to regulate what he was unable to legislate and trying to impose his environmental agenda. He said that the problem was that the country would be stuck trying to import fuel from hostile governments and impeding job creation. Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, on the other hand, said that we have a duty to leave a better planet to future generations. Recalling the devastating BP spill last year, he said that "there was nothing we could do but wait and pray for 87 days" until the spill was finally contained. He said that the spill in question devastated a Gulf economy that was already hit hard by Katrina and that it cost the region $100 billion per year. On top of that, he said that the high gas prices were making it harder for people to get to work. Quoting various sources including the American Petroleum Institute and Moody's, he said that it was not fair for Issa to blame Obama and that it was simply "a blatant attempt to score political points."
Cummings said that the Obama Administration was doing all it could to address the problem of high gas prices and that the one thing that they could do that would provide the most immediate benefits would be to crack down on what he said was rampant speculation that was driving up oil prices. Obama has already appointed a task force that is in the process of investigating that.
EPA Chief Lisa Jackson said that Americans were suffering at the pump and that, quoting Exxon, said that it was a product of high oil prices worldwide. Addressing calls to increase oil production, Ms. Jackson said that there was only so much that the country could do to address oil prices since they could never control more than a fraction of the world's oil reserves but that it was still better to buy American oil than it was to buy foreign oil.
Jackson said that oil production levels in the US are at their highest since 2003. She described the permitting process as a fast one that rarely got appealed or overruled and that the White House was doing all they could do expedite new oil permits. She said that another solution would be "Fracking," which she said would lead to a 50% increase in natural gas production. She said that natural gas production would be cleaner than current methods.
Despite the current high gas prices and the current state of the economy, Ms. Jackson said that the EPA still had a core mission to protect the environment as mandated by Congress; therefore, she said that the EPA would continue to step in and act if there was drilling that was a threat to residents. But she said that another thing that the EPA was doing was tightening up fuel mileage standards, which Jackson said would save billions of gallons of oil and thousands of dollars of savings to the American people in gas costs. She said that biofuels would further reduce consumptions.
David Hayes of the Department of Interior said that there was no quick fix to the present high gas prices and that it was better to follow a long-term energy plan than to panic when gas prices go up and then "hit the snooze button" when they go back down again. He said that the US has already done much to address high gas prices, including for the first time in US history, approve permits for utility-scale renewable energy projects around the country and offshore. He said that the US has already started making progress in getting the country off foreign oil; for instance, the amount of oil that the US has imported has gone from 57% in 2007 to under 50% now. Domestic offshore production has gone up by one third and onshore oil production has gone up 5%. He said that the US was committed to cutting back on foreign oil even more over the next few years.
Hayes said that there was ample opportunities to make even more headway because there were millions of acres both onshore and offshore that were available for development but that have not been used yet. He said that the government was continuing to schedule new lease sales and that they were looking at ways of creating more incentives for oil companies to participate. He said that the US was back in business in the gulf, saying that the permitting process was moving along just as fast as it was before the BP spill.
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