Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

Seems like Bush's statements saying we're "Addicted to Oil" have angered his major supporters. Big oil. Remember them? The ones that made $1,032.00 a second last year? $32 Billion in profits? Yeah them. His Administration came out saying that he did not mean it literally.

Kevin G. Hall of Knight Ridder Newspapers writes:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

First of all I can't believe the Bush would want "alternative energy" research. It sounds like he was just saying things that the American people want to hear. During Bush's reign, U.S dependence on foreign oil has risen to 65%, up from 52%.

I've never seen an Administration back-pedal so fast.

The entire article can be found here:
Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

Technorati tags: Bush, Oil, Middle East, State of the Union