Bush's Goals on Energy Quickly Find Obstacles - New York Times

Bush's Goals on Energy Quickly Find Obstacles - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — The energy proposals set out on Tuesday by President Bush quickly ran into obstacles on Wednesday, showing how difficult it will be to take even the limited steps he supports to reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil.

On the day after he declared in his State of the Union address that the United States was "addicted to oil" and had to wean itself from a century-old habit, Mr. Bush drew some support for putting the issue more prominently on the agenda but also skepticism about how achievable his goals really were.

"Every administration since the early 1970's has struggled with the issue of rising oil imports and the right mix of policies to deal with them," said Daniel Yergin, the author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" and the founder of a consulting firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Some people would just say, 'It's world trade, we sell Boeings and we buy oil.' But since oil is intertwined with geopolitics, people worry about vulnerability and whether oil is a drag on our foreign policy."

Diplomatically, Mr. Bush's ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States' Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 upset Saudi Arabia, the main American oil supplier in the Persian Gulf. In an interview on Wednesday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said he would have to ask Mr. Bush's office "what he exactly meant by that." (He was talking sh** to boost his ratings here in the states)

Politically, both parties on Capitol Hill displayed a lack of enthusiasm. Democrats said Mr. Bush had opposed foreign oil reduction targets in last year's energy bill, and Republicans questioned the practicality of relying on ethanol and other alternatives.
Scientifically, researchers said ethanol and other alternative fuels were still years away from widespread commercial use.

Economically, energy analysts said Mr. Bush's goal of reducing Mideast oil imports would have little practical benefit because oil was traded in world markets and its price was determined by global supply and demand, rather than bought from one country by another.

"If the United States was zero-dependent on Middle Eastern oil, but the rest of our allies among consuming nations were just as dependent, then a disruption anywhere is a price increase everywhere," said Lawrence Goldstein, the president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, a policy analysis group in New York.

Mr. Bush, like other modern presidents, has talked since the earliest days of his administration about weaning the United States off oil, but mostly by supporting an increase in domestic production. On Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Rush Limbaugh's radio program that the administration would continue to push to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

The difference on Tuesday was Mr. Bush's emphasis on alternative energy sources that he had not made a top focus in the past: better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, hydrogen cars, ethanol from wood and agricultural waste, solar and wind technologies and what he called "clean, safe nuclear energy."

The president's tone was so changed, in fact, that some analysts said he sounded like a Democrat. Dan W. Reicher, who served in the Energy Department during the Clinton administration, said Mr. Bush's ideas showed "an uncanny resemblance" to some Clinton efforts.

Mr. Bush's main departure from many Democrats and another source of resistance to his energy plan is his opposition to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars. Mr. Bush has also opposed any effort to impose a higher gasoline tax.

Many economists contend that a significant increase in the gasoline tax could lead to sharp changes in American behavior, because it would give consumers strong reasons to drive more efficient vehicles and give manufacturers incentives for innovative cars, including hybrids that run on gasoline and electricity.

In 2004, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that a gasoline tax of 46 cents a gallon, up from today's federal tax of 18 cents, would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 percent over the next 14 years.

But when asked why Mr. Bush had not called on the public to sacrifice to reduce oil consumption, Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday that "many Americans believe they're already sacrificing by paying the prices they're paying for gasoline and heating oil and natural gas."

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