Q Speaking of that, Tony, there's been some talk on the Hill about maybe accessing some of the SPR -- just putting extra oil in the marketplace to drive down -- looking at nearly $5 a gallon for most people at this point. Has there been any consideration for that?

MR. FRATTO: Look, I think it's good that there are members who are interested in increasing supply of oil here. I think what's disappointing is that the only place they can seem to want to access that supply is in this storage of oil that we set aside for dealing with national emergencies.

Now, there are other supplies of oil out there that we'd like to access, and that's the Outer Continental Shelf and ANWR. And these are places that, were we able to explore and eventually bring to market oil from these sources, that have a long-term impact on prices, rather than some, you know, very minimal short-term impact on prices -- and at the expense of a resource that is here for us to deal with an emergency. We did it dealing with an emergency after Katrina, where we had a supply disruption. If there were an attack on a major pipeline somewhere that would disrupt global supplies of oil, that's what those -- that's what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is for.

It is not there to try to market-time and to try to manipulate prices in the market. And unless you wanted to do very large withdrawals of the -- from the fund, it wouldn't have a lasting impact on oil prices. So we'd like to see members think a little bit more long term and take advantage of the opportunity that we have to do drilling from our domestic sources.

seen at 09:00, 10 July in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
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