Azerbaijan, Baku, March. 12 / Trend /
The United States cannot drill its way out of its energy problems and must begin reforms now to reduce oil dependence, President Barack Obama said on Friday, pledging to do all he could to stabilize fuel prices, Reuters reported.
In a White House news conference aimed at calming U.S. consumers' fears of high gas prices, Obama stressed that he could tap U.S. strategic oil reserves quickly if necessary. But he declined to say what price threshold would trigger such intervention.
Republicans, many of whom rallied around the call "drill, baby, drill" in the 2008 presidential election, accuse the administration of neglecting domestic oil production -- a theme that is likely to resurface in next year's election, too.
The average American household will spend about $700 more for gasoline in 2011 than it spent last year, the Energy Department said this week.
Obama, a Democrat, acknowledged that consumer pain and said more had to be done to secure U.S. energy needs long-term.
"Even if we tap every single reserve available to us, we can't escape the fact that we only control 2 percent of the world's oil, but we consume over a quarter of the world's oil," Obama told a news conference.
"T. Boone Pickens, who made his fortune in the oil business -- and I don't think anybody would consider him unfriendly to drilling -- was right when he said that 'this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of.'"