Lower Gas Prices Now

Lower Gas Prices Now
Brattleboro Reformer
by Rep. Bernie Sanders

6/10/2005

The price of gas at the pump fluctuates daily, but it is now over 40 percent higher than when President Bush first took office. In a rural state like Vermont, where people often travel long distances to work, increased gas prices are taking a heavy bite out of workers' incomes. The high price of gas is also hurting the trucking industry, aviation, small businesses, dairy farmers, tourism and, in fact, the entire American economy. Unfortunately, this situation is only expected to get worse as the summer driving season moves into full swing. According to a new government report, over the next six months the average Vermont family could pay nearly $400 more for gas than it did during the spring and summer of 2003.

Meanwhile, as Vermonters and all Americans are experiencing a gas price squeeze, the big oil companies are making out like bandits. Over the past four years, the five largest oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell have reaped over $205 billion in profits. Last year alone, oil companies earned $87 billion in profits -- an increase of almost 40 percent from 2003. For the second year in a row, ExxonMobil made more profits than any other company in America.

Now, the president would have us believe it would take "a magic wand" to immediately lower gas prices. Not only is this false, but unfortunately the president's own policies are directly contributing to the economic pain Americans are experiencing. Let me mention four approaches that I and other members of Congress are working on which would lower gas prices now:

1. For the past three years, the president has been awarding contracts to ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell to stockpile oil in our nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR] -- which is now almost completely full. If we released a very small amount of that oil into the marketplace, we could see an immediate reduction of gas prices. This is not a new or radical idea. It has been done by both Republican and Democratic administrations. The first time it was done by President Bush's father in 1991, prices immediately dropped by over $10 per barrel. The second time it was done by President Clinton in 2000, gas prices at the pump dropped by 14 cents a gallon in just two weeks. This is not rocket science. It's Economics 101. Increasing supply in the market will lower prices now, and that's what we should be doing.

2. At a time when the president touts the great advantages of globalization and unfettered free trade, he is strangely quiet about the role of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC], an enormously powerful cartel which is expressly designed to control the production and sale of oil. While OPEC violates international free trade and competition agreements every day, costing American consumers billions of dollars, the president has not responded to a letter some of us have written urging him to file a complaint in the World Trade Organization to break up the illegal OPEC cartel.

3. The technology is now available to not only move our country away from fossil fuels and into sustainable energy, but to greatly increase energy efficiency in every aspect of our lives -- including transportation. Instead of driving vehicles which get lower mileage per gallon than we used to, we should raise fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and SUVs so that we do not continue to waste huge amounts of oil. If we raised average fuel standards to 45 miles per gallon for cars and 34 mpg for SUVs over the next decade, we could save consumers $80 billion a year at the pump, 1.3 billion gallons of oil a year, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1.5 trillion pounds a year. It's a win-win -- good for consumers and good for the environment.

4. Finally, Congress must rewrite the so-called energy bill recently passed by the House of Representatives and supported by the president. This legislation provides billions of dollars in corporate welfare to big energy companies and will actually increase gas prices by 3 cents a gallon according to the president's own Energy Department. Instead, Congress must pass legislation which emphasizes energy efficiency and sustainable energy, protects our environment and our national security and looks out for the interests of the average consumer rather than the CEOs of the oil companies.

http://bernie.house.gov/documents/opeds/20050613174012.asp