Production: Obama announces new oil drilling

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama, under pressure over high gasoline prices, on Saturday committed to annual oil and gas lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and to speed up production in other areas. In his weekly radio and internet address, the US leader admitted that one of the biggest burdens for US consumers in recent months had been the high price of gasoline- which is more than four dollars a gallon in some areas. The president vowed to increase safe and responsible oil production from US resources, at the same time as enhancing safety and environmental standards. Obama also offered to speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid- and south Atlantic and to lease new areas of the Gulf of Mexico. He also pledged to unveil new incentives for the oil industry to develop unused leases which have already been acquired.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2011.