Posted: April 19, 2011
8:11 pm Eastern
By John Rossomando
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Republicans say the Obama administration's policies are contributing to skyrocketing gasoline prices – now at more than $4 per gallon throughout much of the country – and they have introduced legislation to reopen the nation's coasts to drilling.
This year will be the first year since 1958 that the federal government will not have sold a lease for offshore drilling, and Republicans say this is fueling skyrocketing prices at the pump.
Congress opened the nation's coasts to drilling when gas hit $4 per gallon in 2008, but the Obama administration effectively reinstated the ban last year by placing the Alaskan, Atlantic and Pacific coasts off-limits to drilling, as well as Florida's west coast.
"We need to look at the actions of this administration, which are leading to more of a domestic shortage of energy production in this country – whether you are looking at the outer continental shelf or whether you are looking at offshore lease sales," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
The chairman told WND that comments made by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar make it seem the administration has a political agenda behind its unwillingness to expand domestic oil drilling.
More than 12,000 jobs in the oil drilling sector have been lost as a direct result of the drilling moratorium the Obama administration imposed last May in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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