President Obama to call for one-third cut to oil imports

[n2doc]

By Steven Mufson, Wednesday, March 30, 6:00 AM

President Obama on Wednesday will call for a one-third cut in oil imports by 2020, part of a plan he says will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign petroleum.


With rising gasoline prices at home and political turmoil throughout the Middle East, Obama will seek in a speech at Georgetown University to rally Americans — and bickering lawmakers — behind a program that draws about half of that import cut from energy savings and about half from greater energy production, according to Obama aides who briefed reporters Tuesday.

Many facets of his program will be familiar. The president will propose wider use of natural gas, including incentives to use it to fuel fleet vehicles such as city buses. He will back greater production of biofuels and will vow to establish at least four commercial-scale refineries producing cellulosic ethanol or advanced biofuels within the next two years. He also will pledge to establish higher fuel-efficiency standards for heavy trucks, just as he did for passenger vehicles early in his administration.

Obama will also urge oil companies to make greater use of the federal leases both onshore and offshore to prop up domestic oil output. The oil industry and GOP lawmakers have been loudly complaining about delays in the permitting of offshore drilling in recent months. But an irked administration, which had pledged tougher scrutiny of drilling applications after last year’s massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, fired back Tuesday with an Interior Department report that revived earlier debates about whether oil companies were exploiting the leases they already have.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/president-obama-to-call-for-one-third-cut-to-oil-imports/2011/03/29/AFFy3O1B_story.html

[nc4bo]

1. The Rachel Maddow show did an excellent piece on the "tougher scrutiny" of drilling apps....

Link to RM calling BS on the Feds and oil companies:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#42260648

and one more....What difference does it make how much oil we drill in the U.S. when it all hits the world market anyway?

[dipsydoodle]

2. Hopefully that will encourage OPEC to reprice in Euros.

.

[Javaman]

3. That's nice.

wake me up if it actually happens.

Considering that the US military is the largest user of fossil fuels in the US and we are currently now fighting 3 wars, who exactly is going to take the energy hit?

I'll give you a hint: it won't be the military or the US government.

Hope you enjoy $10 bucks at the pump, because that's what this will bring.

our bloated government will never ever share in the pain.

Not only are we a corpocracy, we are evolving into a military imperialistic state.

Not a good combination.

[zorahopkins]

5. A Correction In What You Said

"we are evolving into a military imperialistic state."

The USA is not evolving into a military imperialistic state.

The USA became a militaristic imperialistic state a long time ago. Korea and Viet Nam were two countries where the USA waged military imperialistic war.

[Javaman]

6. Good point. I will correct myself.

We are coming out of the military imperial state closet.

No more hiding it.

[pampango]

4. Could accomplish it tomorrow with a big hike in the gas tax.

Not only would it cut down on consumption, it would do it in a way that doesn't give a windfall to the oil companies and would fund infrastructure and public transportation projects.

The price of gas in going up anyway. We can wait and stall and let the politicians off the hook. They do nothing, the price goes up anyway without a gas tax increase, the oil companies benefit from the higher price. We use so much of the world's oil that, if we even proposed a big gas tax, I bet the world price of oil would drop dramatically.

[whatchamacallit]

7. Propaganda to counter the (valid) notion that we're over there for oil (nt)