On gas facts, president pumps politics

WASHINGTON - President Bush put politics ahead of the facts Tuesday as he sought to blame Congress for high energy prices, saying foreign suppliers are pumping just about all the oil they can and accusing lawmakers of blocking new refineries.
    Bush renewed his call for drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge, but his own Energy Department says that would have little impact on gas prices.
    Asked what he is doing to try to get Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, Bush didn't answer directly. ''We've got to understand there's not a lot of excess capacity,'' he said. Blaming ''the lack of refinery capacity'' for high energy prices, he said Congress has rejected his proposal to use shuttered military bases for refinery sites.
    Global oil supplies are tight, in part because OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia are refusing to open their spigots. The Saudis are pumping 8.5 million barrels a day, compared with 9.5 million barrels a day two years ago and have acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day.
    On refineries, Congress has ignored Bush's proposal to use closed military bases. But the oil companies haven't shown interest in building refineries and have dismissed suggestions that military bases might be of use, noting that few bases are near pipelines.
    When top executives of the country's five largest oil companies earlier this month were asked at a House hearing whether they wanted to build a new refinery, each said no. No new refineries have been built in 30 years, and although companies have been adding on to existing refineries, those modest plans have been scaled back because companies anticipate less demand for gasoline given the government's push for a huge expansion of ethanol as a motor fuel.
    Bush has long called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil development, and on Tuesday he chastised Congress for repeatedly blocking the proposal, which he argues would ''likely will mean lower gas prices.''
    Strongly opposed by environmentalists, most Democrats and a few moderate Republicans, drilling in the Arctic refuge has been blocked. However, in the long run, drilling there probably would not significantly impact oil or gasoline prices. And there would be no impact on today's prices.
    In 2005, the Energy Information Administration estimated that it would take 10 years before oil would flow from ANWR if drilling were approved. By 2025, it said, the additional oil would have only a slight impact on global oil prices and cause a decline in gasoline prices of less than a penny a gallon, using constant 2003 dollars.