India, China growth among reasons for increasing oil prices: US

Thursday, 23 February 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

WASHINGTON: The economic boom in countries like India and China and unrest in other parts of the globe are some of the important factors responsible for increase in oil prices, the White House has claimed.

“The rise in gas prices is clearly the effect of a variety of factors on the global price of oil. They include unrest in certain regions of the world. They include growth in areas like China and India,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

The recent hike in global oil prices underscores the need to improve upon the alternate sources of energy, he said.

“The fact that this is happening only underscores the need, as it did last year when prices went up, and as it did two years before that -- underscores the need to have a comprehensive energy policy, which this President has and has been putting into place,” he said.

“That has resulted in more domestic oil production than we’ve had in the past eight years, greater sales of leases in the Gulf and elsewhere to increase our production, the reduction in our reliance on foreign energy sources,” he said.

Carney said these are the kind of policies that have long-term, positive impact on the American economy and on national security.

The Obama Administration, he said, has taken a number of actions in this regard from increasing domestic oil production to increase domestic gas production, the lease sales, the efforts to increase fuel efficiency to reduce dependence on foreign energy.

“This kind of situation that comes periodically because of a rise in the price of oil globally often results in magic solutions being put forward by politicians who may or may not know what they’re talking about,” Carney said.

“But the fact is you have to have an approach that’s comprehensive, that takes a long-term look at reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy, increasing domestic production, and developing alternative sources of fuel. And that’s the approach the ( US) President is taking,” he said.

“We can reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy if we expand in every direction - if we increase oil production, increase gas production, increase our investments in alternative energy, and take dramatic action, like he did with the fuel efficiency standards, the dramatically reduce our consumption of oil and save Americans USD 1.7 trillion in costs,” he added.