President Bush Addresses the 2008 Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association

And so these people -- they want better lives just like our citizens want better lives. And so there is increasing demand for gasoline, which means increasing demand for oil. Most Americans, I'm confident, understand that when the price of crude oil goes up it drives the price of gasoline.

The demand for oil worldwide is outstripping the supply of oil worldwide, which creates pricing pressures. And so what do you do about it? It's one thing to identify the problem; it's another thing to do something about it. Well, one thing you do about it is obviously conservation. I mean, when people drive less it takes pressure off the market.

I happen to believe in the collective wisdom of the American people, and you can make your own decision whether or not you want to drive extra or not. That's the marketplace and how it works. But the government can help, and that's why we passed increased fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.

I want to talk about the supply side. We have got to increase domestic production of oil. If you want to take the price -- (applause) -- if you want to take the pressure off price, we ought to be sending a signal that the United States is going to find oil right here in our own hemisphere. And at the same time, we ought to be working on alternative sources. So I'll spend a little time on ethanol and biodiesel and hydrogen power. But I do want to concentrate on oil.

Congress has got an opportunity to send a signal to our own citizens in the world that we will, in environmentally friendly ways, explore vast opportunities to find -- bring more oil to the market right here in the United States. I'd rather be buying our oil from U.S. producers than sending our money overseas. (Applause.)

And there's a lot of frustration building up. People are looking at Washington to actually do something constructive, and yet we can't get any votes on some practical solutions. Here they are: First, we ought to be drilling offshore exploration, what's called the Outer Continental Shelf. These limits are -- this Outer Continental Shelf is off limits, and it has been for a while, although the experts say that this could produce enough oil to match our current production for nearly 10 years. There's a lot of potential. Problem is that the Congress has restricted access to key areas of the OCS since the early 1980s; there's prohibitions in law.

Technologies has advanced a lot since the 1980s. You know it in your own industry, but if you know anything about the oil and gas business, you know that there's been unbelievable technological breakthroughs when it comes for exploration for oil and gas. I mean, you can be very -- you can drill in a single-site location with horizontal drilling to explore reservoirs, which makes it easier to protect coral reefs, for example, in the offshore -- we all want to be environmentally friendly people, but we also want to have practical policies that deal with the problems we face today and the problems we'll face tomorrow if we don't get going.

I asked the Congress to lift the legislative ban in June to allow there to be offshore exploration. Tomorrow is the 1st of August. That is now six weeks since I made the request, and Democratic leaders there haven't done anything. I -- members are fixing to go home on their August break; they get to explain to their citizens why nothing positive has happened. Looking forward to listening to the explanations. It's -- there's legislation pending in Congress to lift the restrictions. My call is, before you go home for an extended period of time, you ought to bring these bills to the floor. The leaders ought to be giving these members a vote -- a chance to say yes or no as to whether or not we ought to be finding more domestic oil to take the pressure off gasoline prices. (Applause.)

There were executive restrictions on OCS exploration. I've taken them off. I've done my part. And now the Congress needs to do its part.

Secondly, we ought to expand oil production by tapping into oil shale. Oil shale is out west in the Rocky Mountain West, and that alone, if fully recovered, equals more than a century's worth of imports at current levels -- in other words, there's huge potential. And there's new technologies that may make this become economically viable.

The problem is, is that there's a provision inserted into law that blocks oil shale leasing on federal lands. In other words, the federal lands that contain the oil shale, you can't lease them. And if you can't lease them, obviously you can't explore. The provision was slipped in; it can be slipped out. (Laughter and applause.)

We ought to be drilling in Alaska. I told you about the new exploration techniques, the new drilling techniques. You can have a drilling site that protects the flora and the fauna, and explore in ways to get -- to be -- doesn't deplete your reservoir unnecessarily. In other words, we get oil and gas to the pipeline. We can drill on a tiny footprint relative to the vast tract of land, and it's estimated that that would produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. Now, some of the critics say that's not much oil. Well, that's ten billion barrels times current price -- less money going overseas and staying here in the United States of America. (Applause.)