BEND, OR — With oil and gas prices increasing considerably over the last couple of weeks, Jeff Merkley and several other senators have called on President Obama to act now to lower the price at the pump. Merkley, a guest Thursday morning on Wake Up Bend!, said a small portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) should be sold off to help bring down gas prices. He said with crude prices above $100 a barrel, that will hurt a U.S. economy trying to get on it’s feet again.
“We’re in the middle of this very fragile, some would call it a recovery, I’d say it’s more like a stagnation right now. We certainly don’t want to set ourselves back into the deepest depths of the recession, and these foreign oil prices have the ability to do that.”
Merkley said tapping into the SPR will only help the consumer now. He added that it’s vital the U.S. look at its oil consumption, and come up with short and long term answers to move away from foreign energy sources.
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