A nozzle gas is used to pump gasoline at a station in New York, February 22, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Shannon StapletonBy Alister Bull and David AlexanderWASHINGTON | Di april 26, 2011 8: 53 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters)-President Barack Obama on Tuesday called world oil producers to raise crude output, as he wanted to deflect public anger over high gasoline prices that his popularity among voters has hurt.
US motor fuel prices have become a heated political issue after pushing toward $ 4 a gallon. Gasoline futures hit 33-month highs on Tuesday.
The rising prices at the pump are fueling voter dissatisfaction with Obama's leadership, according to opinion polls, and is detrimental to his re-election chances in 2012.
"They need to increase deliveries," Obama told CBS affiliate WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia. "We are in a lot of conversations with major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia," he told WXYZ in Detroit television separately.
Producers to pump more oil in times of high oil prices was a strategy used by the administrations of former Presidents George w. Bush and Bill Clinton calls.
Obama, had until now focused on trying to reduce the demand for oil, but he made clear in his comments on Tuesday that the increasing output also was part of the solution.
"It is the first time the Obama administration has done this, but it is not because they have devised a new strategy for trying to fight high oil prices," said Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures perspective in New York.
"It is because it is the first time that they have seen a 30 percent jump in oil prices a few months."
Repeating concern that energy traders can be higher prices, burning of the administration of the Obama top law enforcement official, Attorney General Eric Holder, told reporters that he saw a number of "disturbing" things in the energy markets.
He said that this justified the formation of a task force unveiled last week to consider possible fraud and manipulation of gasoline prices.
Earlier on Tuesday, the President sent a letter to Congress urging the end to tax breaks for oil and gas companies.
In the letter, Obama praised what he called bipartisan support for the end of the tax advantages.
But Republicans who feel rising gas prices help them can defeat Obama in the 2012 election, said the approach would "raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.
These opposition contradicted signs of openness on Monday of the top Republican in the House of representatives, speaker John Boehner [ID: nN25223852], who expressed willingness to look at the oil and gas companies receive subsidies.
Support these put him somewhat at odds with his party long before the energy industry, but by Tuesday his comments on the Obama energy policy had enabled much more critical.
GRASPING AT STRAWS
Indicating that the President's plan anything other than a political tactic was skepticism, energy analysts said that there is no quick fix to the problem of high gasoline prices.
"Obama has said no, there is no panacea to help push the gasoline prices in the short term, but now it seems he is grasping at straws in the last couple of days to find to do the trick," said Matt Smith at Top of energy in Kentucky.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll on Tuesday found that 71 percent of those polled said gasoline prices were causing them severe financial difficulties, while 55% of the way Obama rejected was treatment of his job as President.
The White House rejected suggestions the letter Obama is designed to deflect anger over gas price of away from the President and the direction of oil companies, which has repeatedly noted huge profits have made and continue to enjoy tax subsidies.
"We do not see this as a matter of electoral politics in 18 months," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
Obama, repeating a line he repeatedly has used in his two annual budget proposals, said more than $ 4 billion saved by closing the oil industry tax breaks could be invested in clean energy that would help to U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Timothy Gardner and Jeremy Pelofsky; Edit by Laura MacInnis and Philip Barbara)
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