Thursday, May 1, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell joined his Republican colleagues Thursday in introducing the American Energy Production Act of 2008, which would increase domestic energy production and help lower gas prices.

“The coal we can mine in this country alone would be enough to supply our nation for more than 250 years,” Senator McConnell said. “What Saudi Arabia is to oil, America is to coal.”

The bill would also expand domestic energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), in Alaska and through the development of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. It would accelerate the development of advanced batteries to power plug-in hybrid vehicles, and encourage the construction of new refineries to bolster domestic supplies. And it would suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months.