White House Press Corps.org: Lifting of Executive Prohibition of Federal Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 7/14/08

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Lifting of Executive Prohibition of Federal Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 7/14/08
— Monday, July 14, 2008 —

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Q Does [the President's] action today revoke entirely the executive order his father signed, or is it more nuanced?

MS. PERINO: It doesn't. It doesn't.

Q Okay.

MS. PERINO: Yes.

Q Given the reluctance of the Congress to turn the other key, is it fair to call this a symbolic gesture?

MS. PERINO: Well, I think that you have seen increasingly Americans are understanding the importance of this issue; they're becoming more educated about the advances in technology that have taken place that would protect the environment. I know that across Europe, especially in the North Sea, there's a lot of offshore oil drilling that takes place, and they've been able to do it in ways that has been able to be protective of the environment.

So there's three more weeks left of Congress, and you've been in town long enough to know that oftentimes Congress gets most of its work done in just the remaining weeks right before it goes off for August recess. One thing I know that the Democrats continue to recommend is that we -- or to suggest -- is that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the answer to all of our problems. We strongly believe that it's not. That trick has been tried before and it doesn't work.

It's unfortunate that the only place Democrats in Congress seem to be able to think we can get oil is from our insurance policy, which is the extra supply that we have in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And to my knowledge, Speaker Pelosi or others have not indicated how long they would recommend -- or how many -- how long they would recommend taking oil out of the SPR. They've not said what the price point is they're trying to get to. They've not said how long it would last. And so I think those are -- a lot of questions have to be answered before they could even be taken seriously. I believe that Democrats believe a problem delayed is a problem half-solved -- and in this case, it doesn't work.

Q Are you seeing increased support from Democrats?

MS. PERINO: I think -- you can -- I won't speak for them, but I think you have seen increasingly there have been some Democratic members of Congress who are starting to change their position on this, and what -- in ways that they can look at the technology that has improved, the demand from Americans because they are paying record-high gas prices. And I will repeat again, there's no magic wand that's going to decrease prices overnight. But what we're trying to do is send a signal to the market that more supply would be coming on line. And we will work with Congress to try to do that.

Labels: Congress, Dana Perino, Natural Gas, Oil, President Bush, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps

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