Pat Buchanan on Energy & Oil 2000 Reform Candidate for President

Drill in Alaska and play hardball with OPEC

A: I believe they ought to drill in the ANWR. It’s only a portion of it. There’s five billion barrels of oil there. But more important, the United States, instead of busting up Microsoft, an American asset, ought to have a national policy to break up the OPEC cartel. It is a price-rigging, criminal conspiracy designed to loot the West and the United States of scores of billions of dollars every single year. Cut off all IMF foreign aid loans to any country that belongs to OPEC. Tell any country that does belong to OPEC, ‘U.S. security guarantees are going to be lifted unless you drill more oil.’ We have got to play hardball. These people in Washington-Clinton talks about the idea of free trade and interdependence. These people don’t believe in that. They believe in driving you to the wall. If they get control of a commodity that you don’t have-and the United States needs an America first policy of economic nationalism to deal with it.

Energy independence by developing Caspian pipelines

Steps to ensure US energy independence include:
• an end to draw-downs of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and topping it off
• rapid development of the oil resources of Russia, the Caspian, and Central Asia
• multiplication of pipelines from the Caspian and the Gulf.

Explore ANWR; reconsider nuclear power & oil import fee

America needs an insurance policy [against the oil weapon, including]:
• opening up the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge to exploratory drilling
• reconsideration of the use of nuclear power to generate electricity
• study of the potential of an oil import fee to stimulate conservation and new drilling, and to make clean coal and natural gas more competitive.

Opposes raising CAFE standards

Opposes Kyoto Treaty because it regulates US most