Bush On Energy Crisis: "It Took Us A While To Get Into This Energy Situation We're In, It's Gonna Take Us A While To Get Out Of It" (VIDEO)

President Bush held a press conference today in the Rose Garden of the White House after giving remarks about the upcoming G-8 conference. He was asked what he realistically expected to accomplish at the G-8 in order to deal with, among other things, soaring oil prices. Besides advocating that we increase drilling here at home, Bush offered this less than reassuring answer: "It took us a while to get into the energy situation we're in, it's gonna take us a while to get out of it."

[WATCH]

From AP:

As the holiday weekend began, Bush said Congress was in part to blame for rising gas prices that have stung American consumers.

He said lawmakers continue to block his proposals, including lifting prohibitions on offshore oil drilling. The president has also called for allowing oil drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity, and lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Bush even appealed to Americans to lobby their congressional representatives on the matter.

"We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways and they ought to be writing their Congress people about it," Bush said.

Bush outlined his goals for his last G-8 summit of nations, which are the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

The debate about what to do about global warming will be front and center in Hokkaido too, although the discussion will be on the sidelines of the actual summit. Bush is hosting a meeting of major economies to urge nations to embrace long-term commitments to reduce green house gas emissions, but he appeared to be lowering expectations.

Read more about the press conference here.

Comments

[moeknox]

As I remember, Gas jumped from $ 0.99 a gallon to just over $2.00 a gallon over night, when the war on Iraq was announced.

[Rochester]

Wrong again Mr. Bush. Oil refineries are working at 85% capacity. Speculators are trading energy commodity futures as if they were financial assets, thus driving up the spot price of oil. Does anyone remember Enron? Solution: raise the margins on commodity futures across the board from 5% to 50% and force speculators to take delivery of their contracts. The cost of a barrel of oil would drop from $146.00 to $55.00 in a quick hurry. Keep an eye on your pension fund.

[LeftVetPatriot]

Gas was $1.52 in '00.

[cultkicker]

All of you who think drilling for oil in Anwar, or anywhere else for that matter, is going to do ANYTHING for the price of oil is SMOKING some good stuff! Anwar will take a MINIMUM of 10 years to come on line, then at it's peak it will give us less than 1 milion barrels a day.... we use over 20 million daily now. Drilling offshore is another problem... we don't have any more BOATS to ship the oil to our shores from the rigs... they are already operating at FULL CAPACITY. The real reason for this oil spike is due to SPECULATORS IN THE FUTURES MARKETS... theys hedge fund speculators work for the OIL COMPANIES and CONSPIRE to bid up the price whenever another RUMOR hits the news about Iran or some other contrived story. IT IS ALL A BIG SCAM... there is NO SHORTAGE of oil.

[TxAggie]

Cultkicker-I hate to be the one to tell you this while you are on a roll but oil in the GOM is not brought by boat to shore- it is transported by pipeline, which by the way is the safest method of transporting vs hauling by tanker (a la Exxon Valdez).

[mjt218]

Who cares about the impact on gas prices short term? Opening up areas for additional exploration and production will have a positive impact on our economy.

Oil companies would spend millions here in the States on everything from valve and pipe manufacture to safety gear. Jobs would be created from executive levels, to highly skilled technical positions, all the way down to the unskilled laborer positions.

Eventually, millions of dollars of royalty revenue would be generated for State and Federal governments. Why not open up the areas for more drilling and earmark all the revenues for alternative energy developmen­t/investme­nt/subsidi­es?

Also, I believe cultkicker intended to bring up the point of limited drill rig supply to allow for additional drilling offshore. Right now, the price of oil is higher in part due to the fact that a large portion of the easily accessible supplies of oil have been exploited. At these price levels, oil companies are willing to tie up drilling rigs on high-risk unconventional exploration and production that requires extensive drilling time (~8000' of water in the Gulf of Mexico). If opportunities with less risk in shallower water are opened up, oil companies will allocate the rigs they have leased to these opportunities ahead of the high risk ones. Basically oil companies will get more bang for their buck quicker, which should in theory be passed on to the consumer.

[thundermummy]

Listen. W is right. If we open ANWAR to drilling, the oil will greet us as liberators.

[levibatgirl]

The bastard.

[myshadow]

July, August, September, October, November, December, January
The longest seven months of our lives...

[flatus]

Hey, all he has to do is cover his ass for another six months and then sweet endless luxury, baby!

[StillAmused]

They're still quoting this imbecile?

Does the local newspaper quote the village idiot where you live?

[nirek]

He iIS America's IDIOT aint he. No my hometown doesn't quote the village idiot.

[donkat]

What a moron. Oil prices are up for good - the Saudis raised their production numbers twice and it made no difference. Drilling in Anwar will give us 2 years of oil. Oboy, that's worth ruining one of our nation's national treasures for.

If you really want to drill in an oil rich environment, try Los Angeles, there's tons of oil below ground there.

Gawd, I hate that man. He acts like he had nothing to do with the mess. It's congress fault, it everyone else's fault, always.

[BilCon]

That sounds like fun, replace Hollywood with a refinery. Solves 2 problems at once.

Seriously though, the area they want to drill in ANWR is not the idyllic environment everyone pictures. Nor is the area to be considered for drilling that large. I believe it is on the order of about 10 acres now that we have the ability to drill directionally. Also, has anyone considered the hipocrasy of asking other countries to do what we are unwilling to? "Please, King Saud, would you please pump more oil so that we don't have to ruin our views? While you are at it, could you refine it for us as well, we won't build a new refinery."

[BilCon]

I forgot to mention the oil derricks in Beverly Hills.

[TxAggie]

BilCon the nos are 19,000,000 acres in the ANWAR Coastal Plain. The impact of oil and gas development would be 2,000 acres. Just considering the math shows what a ridiculous argument the nay sayers have.

[drumz]

Another example of how stupid bu$h really is. The oil companies are sitting on 10,000 permits to drill and aren't using them. The amount of oil we would get would only give us a couple days of extra crude. It will take 15 years before we will see any of it.
People that believe this are either making money off oil companies or are bu$h apologists that should be run out of this country like the whole administration - spit!

[TxAggie]

Drumz- What are you talking about? "The oil companies are sitting on 10,000 permits to drill and aren't using them". Do you know what a permit to drill is? If you did you you would realize how ridiculous it is for you to make up a lie such as that one.

[RENREVARD]

Why are we paying the same price for domestic oil as we pay for imported oil President (oil) Bush?

[RENREVARD]

Why do we pay the same price for domestic oil as we pay for imported oil President (oil) Bush?

[TxAggie]

It is a worldwide commodity- that is the market price (however imperfect that market may be).

[TXOBAMAGIRL73]

In a perfect world(( W)) would turn himself and all others who willing participated in the rape and pillaging of this country for the past 7 1/2 year.

[collprof]

I find it interesting that all Americans are united as they are about to witness another speech being given by Bush and all think the same thing...

Please don't say something stupid and embarrass my country again.