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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Pearce, Udall Energy Debate Heats Up Senate Race
By Heather Clark
Associated Press
Dana Hampton is receiving cervical cancer treatments for eight weeks about 200 miles from her Alamogordo home, but with fuel costs pushing $4 per gallon her husband and children are struggling to make weekend visits to see her.
"Gas is killing us," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "We can't pay our bills. ... We can barely feed our kids. Four dollars a gallon — are we serious?"
Hampton, a Republican, says her family's struggle with high prices at the pump has made her take a hard look at both U.S. Senate candidates, Reps. Steve Pearce and Tom Udall, as she tries to decide whom to vote for in November.
Voters like Hampton want Congress to do something now to bring down fuel prices. A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday showed 47 percent of respondents rate energy exploration, drilling and building new power plants as the top priority, compared with 35 percent who believed that five months ago. Sixty percent of those polled said increasing energy supplies is more important than protecting the environment.
Pearce, a Republican and former owner of an oilfield services company in southeastern New Mexico, supports more domestic drilling, in part because he thinks renewable energy is decades away from becoming a significant viable alternative.
Udall, a Democrat and son of former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, supports some domestic drilling, but also wants a significant conservation program and research to find technological breakthroughs that will create a green economy.
The candidates' debate — a Republican who wants to expand domestic drilling and a Democrat who focuses on conservation — reflects what's happening in races across the country with different nuances in coal- or oil-producing and coastal states, said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
The issue likely will remain a top concern among voters until November, he said.
"One of the things about gasoline prices is you notice this once a week because it slaps you right in the face when you go to fill up," Ornstein said.
Pearce and Udall are polar opposites on a short-term solution to lower fuel costs, especially when it comes to speculators in the market on future oil prices.
Congressional support of domestic oil and gas drilling would be one of the quickest ways to reduce gas prices, said Pearce, who supports drilling on the outer continental shelf and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR.
By showing its intent to boost domestic production, Congress would pressure future oil prices to drop and would prompt the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase exports, he said.
"The speculators would be the first to drive the price down. It would happen within 24 to 48 hours," Pearce said. "I think the price at the pump could show effects in three to four weeks."
Udall thinks Congress should stop such speculation altogether.
"Cracking down on speculators could quickly reduce the cost of a barrel of oil by about one-third and knock a dollar off the price of gas," he said.
Udall's other short-term solutions to bring down fuel costs include bringing new clean oil refineries on line to increase supply, prohibiting price gouging and launching a significant conservation program to reduce demand.
Udall said he supports "responsible" domestic drilling — for example, when local communities are supportive. He said he supports drilling at a site in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, but opposes drilling in ANWR.
The United States has 3 percent of the worldwide reserves, but consumes 25 percent of world output, a ratio which is not sustainable, Udall said.
"We aren't going to drill our way out of this," he said.
But Pearce says that had Congress voted to drill in ANWR in 1995, the area would now be producing 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, which would replace 30 years' worth of Saudi Arabian imports and reduce America's dependence of foreign oil by 6 percent.
Both candidates say renewable energy is in America's future, but disagree on how long it will take to become a significant alternative to oil.
Udall, a longtime proponent of renewable energy, said America needs to stop spending $25 million per hour to import foreign oil and instead support research and development — with the help of national laboratories like Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico — to create a green economy.
He first introduced a bill creating a federal Renewable Electricity Standard in 2002 and has been introducing versions since. The measure would require electric utilities to provide 15 percent of their electricity from wind, solar and other renewable energy sources by 2020. It would create an estimated 300,000 jobs, he said.
While Pearce sees renewable energy in America's future, he says it could be up to 40 years before solar and wind energy could be significant power sources that replace oil.
Last month, Pearce introduced a bill that would take about $800 billion in royalties from oil and gas drilling on public lands over the life of the wells to be used for renewable energy development. Half the money would go to the states where the drilling takes place, he said.
Udall called the move "a very late conversion."
"I think he's voted consistently against forms of renewable energy. I think it's politics, there's no doubt about it," Udall said.
Pearce charged that Udall has talked of supporting domestic drilling and oil refineries during the campaign, after years of voting against such proposals in Congress.
"How can he say this stuff and vote the other way?" Pearce said. "We're trying to solve problems up here, but you've got people playing political games, and that's the difference between Tom and me."
Copyright ©2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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