Oil Politics Bubble Onward

Partisan squabbling over America's oil policy has yet to run out of gas in Campaign 2000.

On CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson defended President Clinton's decision to release 30 million barrels of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The secretary also said Mr. Clinton has not ruled out an additional release from the reserve at a later date.

"After 30 days, after 30 million barrels, the president will make an assessment and see where we are," Richardson told Face The Nation.

Last week's release came as the price of crude oil hit nearly $40 dollars a barrel amid growing concerns about low heating oil stocks for next winter. But Republicans from George W. Bush on down say that Mr. Clinton's move was meant only to help fellow Democrat Al Gore in the race for the White House. They point out that earlier this year, the vice president said a release from the reserve simply was not necessary.

"As long as it's as small as it is and OPEC has such big reserves, all they would have to do is to cut back a little bit on the supply, and they'd wipe out any impact from releasing oil from that reserve," said Gore last February.

But back then, explained Richardson on Sunday, "we didn't have home heating oil supplies so low, crude oil stocks so low, the price of crude per barrel (at) $38. OPEC has acted three times to put 3.5 million more barrels of oil on the market … (T)hose were positive moves, but it really didn't deal with a huge demand internationally. This is an international problem."

Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who also appeared on Face The Nation on Sunday, said the administration is passing the accountability buck.

"We are in a mess, and we have a projected mess coming. And why is that? Well, we're dependent on foreign oil by 60 percent, and it increases," he said.

"And if you look at just the dynamics of what's happened in the last eight years," he added, "our production here in this country has decreased by 18 percent, our dependency on foreign oil has increased by about 30 percent, our demand is up by about 15 percent. So that's the problem here, and let's not kid ourselves."

GOP running mate Dick Cheney hammered Gore in particular on that front.

"He's been in power for seven and a half years. He's been the vice president. He's been at the right hand of the man making the decision. He claims he's been in on all the decisions," Cheney said on ABC's This Week Sunday.

"What is their energy policy? There is none, they don't have one, they never have," said Cheney of the Clinton administration and Gore. "Now that he's in a election campaign, he's out pointing the finger blaming everybody else, flapping his arms, acting as though somebody is responsible for his failure."

Richardson told Face The Nation that OPEC, Euopean countries, and the markets have all reacted favorably to Mr. Clinton's decision, which he said will help critical areas such as the Northeast with their heating oil needs this winter.

"So this is insurance for the American taxpayer … We are not selling, we are not depleting the reserve," the secretary said. "We're putting more oil on the market under favorable market conditions … We will build about three to five million barrels of distillate that can be used for the East Coast and other parts of the country with this move."

In the race for the White House, weekend polls showed the presidential campaign is tied once again with Republican Bush erasing Democrat Gore's recent lead.

Polls by Gallup, Newsweek, and Fox TV showed the race a statistical dead heat. The vice president led by three percentage points in a Newsweek survey - he had led by 14 points a week ago - but Bush jumped into the lead by a single point in a Gallup daily tracking poll. In the Fox poll, the two candidates were tied.

These surveys followed a good week for the Texas governor, who enjoyed successful appearances on TV chat shows - including Oprah and Live With Regis - and managed to get his campaign back on message.

As for Gore, he was dogged by allegations he invented a story about his mother-in-law paying three times as much for a drug as his dog. The vice president's campaign aides said the story was true, but acknowledged that Gore got his figures from a congressional study rather than from actual family bills.