U.S. & World

WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Bush said Tuesday that Hurricane Gustav's glancing blow on U.S. energy infrastructure off the Gulf Coast should prompt Congress to OK more domestic oil production.

"When Congress comes back, they've got to understand that we need more domestic energy, not less," said Bush, who is visiting Louisiana on Wednesday to survey damage. "One place to find it is offshore America -- lands that have been taken off the books, so to speak, by congressional law -- and now they need to give us a chance to find more oil and gas here at home.

"I know that the Congress has been on recess for a while, but this issue hasn't gone away," he said in a nudge to lawmakers who return from recess on Sept. 8.

The pressure to expand offshore drilling intensified in July when Bush lifted an executive prohibition on drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. A congressional ban remains in place.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the administration's interest in drilling more domestically reflects demands from the oil industry. "America faces a choice: a continuation of the Bush-Cheney-McCain legacy of soaring prices and greater dependence on foreign oil or a comprehensive, bipartisan strategy that develops new and traditional sources of energy," she said.

Polls have shown, however, that as fuel prices have climbed, voters have grown more supportive of more domestic oil production. Pelosi recently signaled her willingness to consider opening up more coastal areas to oil and natural gas exploration. She said it would be a part of energy legislation that House Democrats intend to put forward in the coming weeks to address oil dependence and high gasoline prices.

Lawmakers will be able to consider opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, with appropriate safeguards and without "taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil," said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Bush is keeping a hands-on profile in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, in contrast to the government's poor response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago. On Monday, he visited two emergency response centers in Texas just after the storm struck the Gulf Coast.

Early Tuesday he was in the Roosevelt Room discussing the storm's impact on the oil industry with Vice President Dick Cheney and about 20 advis On Wednesday, following his speech late Tuesday via satellite to the Republican National Convention, Bush is making several stops in Louisiana. The White House has not yet finalized the schedule.

Initial inspections of the Gulf Coast's extensive energy complex confirmed Tuesday that Hurricane Gustav was nowhere near as destructive as hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago, but resumption of production and refining may be a few days away, or more.

Oil companies, rig and pipeline owners and refiners spread out across the region to look for damage from Monday's storm, and some already were putting equipment and people back in place to resume operations. The full impact should be known in the next couple of days.

One major unknown remained: the fate of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which shut down over the weekend.

Gustav appeared to roll directly over the facility, which handles about 12 percent of the nation's crude imports and is tied by pipeline to about half the nation's refining capacity, much of it along the Mississippi River from the New Orleans area north to Baton Rouge.

Any prolonged closure of the facility could severely disrupt crude imports and their shipment to refineries.

The price of oil, meanwhile, tumbled more than $8 a barrel in electronic trading Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, suggesting traders were confident that the energy complex suffered only a glancing blow.

Gustav roared ashore early Monday and eight deaths were attributed to the storm in the U.S. after it killed at least 94 people across the Caribbean. It was downgraded to a tropical depression Tuesday, and mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for three Southeast Texas counties. Though New Orleans was largely spared, there still was damage, and anxious evacuees were told not to come home yet.

In the days preceding Gustav, oil companies shut down virtually all oil and natural gas production in the Gulf, and the storm's threat halted about 15 percent of the nation's refining capacity based in the region. The U.S. Gulf Coast is home to nearly half the nation's refining capacity, while offshore the Gulf accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output.

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