By IRNA,
New York : The House and Senate demanded on Tuesday that President George W. Bush halt the shipment of oil to the country’s strategic petroleum reserve as long as oil prices remain high.
“Sticking oil underground is wrong at this point in time,” Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said as he urged approval of a measure offered by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader.
The Senate voted, 97 to 1, to tell Bush to halt the shipments to the strategic reserve, the supply of just over 700 million barrels that is stored in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast.
The reserve is meant to protect the United States against a disastrous sudden cutoff of oil supplies, like the Arab embargo of the 1970s.
Tuesday evening, by a vote of 385 to 25, the House passed legislation that would suspend deliveries to the stockpile while the price of oil was above $75 a barrel, a measure that is similar to the Senate’s.
The Bush administration has opposed the measures. Given the sentiment in the two legislative chambers, any veto of the measure by Bush would probably be overridden.
But the Senate measure is part of another bill, while the House version is a stand-alone item, so there are some procedural hurdles that must be overcome before the oil-cutoff move can emerge from the full Congress.