New Year Rings In Historic Crude Prices
January Delivery Prices Break Triple Digits for the First Time
WASHINGTON, DC (January 2, 2008) – At the end of a busy travel season, steadily rising oil prices hit $100 per barrel today, contributing to a national average of more than $3.00 per gallon of gas.
Following is a statement by Deron Lovaas, vehicles campaign director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC):
“This historic price point comes less than a month after Congress passed an energy bill that will make new cars in America go farther on a gallon of gas by increasing fuel efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Measures like this are the answer to rising oil prices, not foolhardy endeavors like continuing to drill for even more costly fossil fuels to feed the Nation’s oil addiction. America’s future lies in more efficient use of this limited resource and investments in renewable energy, specifically solar, wind, and geothermal sources.
“The time to break our oil addiction is right now. We have the know-how to do it and if the energy bill passage is any indication, we're also building the political will to do it.
“We can’t keep living at the mercy of the price of a barrel of oil. Americans will continue to feel this addiction in their pocketbooks and it will only get worse until we move beyond fossil fuels. It's time to set ourselves free.”
For more comments on oil, please visit Deron Lovaas’s blog at http://switchboard.nrdc.org/.