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High Gas Prices Here to Stay, Energy Secretary Warns

EPA Suggests Switch to Fluorescent Light Bulbs

October 6, 2005
The U.S. Energy Secretary warns that gasoline and other energy prices that have shot up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are likely to remain high for several years.

Secretary Samuel Bodman says the only way to mitigate the high prices is conserve energy.

As part of the national campaign to promote voluntary conservation, the Environmental Protection Agency urged consumers to switch from conventional lights to low-energy fluorescent bulbs.

"Both oil and natural gas availability has been severely impaired and the effects of this will reverberate through the economy of this country for some time," Bodmen told reporters. "The main thing that U.S. citizens can do is conserve. We simply have to do it."

The call for conservation is a signal that the Bush Administration is giving up on its plan to focus on expanding supplies of available domestic energy.

Bodman said that for the next several years, "We all need to be more thoughtful in how we use energy." While the economy has thrived on relatively inexpensive energy, "those days, at least for the medium term, are behind us."

Bodman insisted, however, that raising gas taxes to encourage conservation “would be more interference with the free market than we would like.” Some energy experts have argued that public education is no substitute for regulation. But the administration has resisted proposals to force companies to build more energy-efficient houses, air-conditioning units and cars.

Last week it refused to back more energy-efficient building standards for new homes, saying more research was needed.

The House of Representatives is due to vote tomorrow on measures to stimulate the building of new refineries. Bodman said the U.S. would consider creating an oil reserve to augment the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and would look at moving refining and other facilities away from the storm-exposed Gulf coast.

Bodman also said that greater oil production from Saudi Arabia should help lower prices over the next two to three years.

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