A well-known Republican senator said on Mon that the US had gone “too far into the essential environmentalist camp” soon after unrest in the Middle East that contributed to an increase in oil costs.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), ranking person of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters immediately after a speech that energy improvement assisted to spark economic development, and that he hoped people today had begun to understand that the USA has plenty of natural resources.
“We’ve got to wake up in this country,” Hatch said, raising the threat of $5-a-gallon gas prices. “We can’t run the country without energy. And yet the radical environmentalists are shutting the nation down.”
Hatch also asserted that he was having difficulty getting Democrats to join with him on humanizing natural gas, one of his pet problems, and also dubbed America “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill this week, where he is expected to be asked by Republicans about existing restrictions on offshore oil drilling.
Oil prices happen to be unpredictable amid the trouble in Libya; hitting $100 a barrel a week ago for the first time since President Obama entered the White House. Administration executives expressed worries about the price of oil past week, but also said they had been confident the economy could handle a spike in costs.
