U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged President Bush to release crude oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat high prices, a call Republicans used to bolster their push to increase domestic production with more drilling in environmentally sensitive areas.
The Department of Energy plans to suspend this delivery of the 70,000 barrels of oil per day currently going into the SPR - per a law Congress passed in May that required the suspension until the end of 2008. But many Democrats want Bush to go further.
Pelosi sent a letter asking the president "to draw down a small portion" of the SPR's more than 700 million barrels of oil "to help reduce record prices that are helping push the economy toward recession."
"Releasing oil from the Reserve is a tool to manage our national and economic security, and when judiciously used will in no way jeopardize national security," the California Democrat wrote.
