John Tierney: “I was one of those 114-plus Members that signed a letter to the President asking him to do a number of things that would…”

“I was one of those 114-plus Members that signed a letter to the President asking him to do a number of things that would improve the energy situation. I joined a number of my colleagues from the mid-Atlantic States, as well as from my home State of Massachusetts and New England in talking with the President and the Department of Energy as far back as last winter when these problems originated. We have consistently asked the President to take the kind of preemptive moves that we thought were necessary setting up a reserve for the Northeastern area, releasing fuel from the SPR, from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to cover that difference. Trying to make this into a case where people think that that release was to cover all of our needs is way off base. The fact of the matter is there is a gap between what is produced and what is consumed, and it is only that gap that we are trying to affect. We asked the OPEC countries to produce more oil, and they are trying to do that.”