OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla--- U.S. Republicans have had to watch from the sidelines as the Obama White House has taken political credit for America's unexpected energy boom and tumbling gas prices. Now it has left their presidential candidates scrambling for a way to reclaim leadership on an issue the party once seemed to own.
Their apparent answer: calling time on a 40-year-old federal ban on crude oil exports and using the newfound energy bounty to strategic advantage.
"We've got an abundance of supply," Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said this week in Oklahoma at a gathering of putative Republican candidates for next year's presidential election. Lifting the ban, he said, would allow exports to "our allies in Europe, where, instead of being dependent on (President) Vladimir Putin and the Russians, they could be dependent on Americans."
President Barack Obama's administration has allowed small exceptions but has said it will not open the door to crude exports as long as the United States is still importing some oil. Even the Republican-led Congress has been reluctant to push too quickly for an end to the export ban, fearing political repercussions should gas prices spike in the aftermath.
But several in the ranks of Republican presidential candidates or likely candidates are warming to the idea. Walker's call was echoed by others in Oklahoma, where powerful oil and gas interests want the ban lifted.
REUTERS
