WASHINGTON — Faced with strong opposition in Congress to his plans for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, President Bush said Thursday he was prepared to exploit oil and gas resources elsewhere in the nation on land that was not federally protected.
And he said that if he could not wring enough fuel out of the United States he would look to Canada and Mexico to address current domestic shortages.
"It doesn't matter to me where the gas comes from, in the long run, just so long as we get gas moving into the country," Bush said. It was the first time the president has suggested that he might not soon achieve his goal of extracting oil from the Arctic refuge in Alaska, although the oil and gas industry is lobbying Congress intensely for the right to drill there.
In a half-hour news conference in the White House briefing room, punctuated by easy banter with reporters, Bush took an assertive pro-business stand on a range of domestic policy issues, including energy, the environment, taxes and regulation.
"We will not do anything that harms our economy," the president declared in a blunt defense of his recent environmental actions, including his decision not to seek lower power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide, his withdrawal of President Bill Clinton's stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water and his refusal to participate in an international agreement on global warming.
Bush said his administration would tighten arsenic limits after a review of water standards. But he defended his administration's first steps to overrule Clinton administration orders, saying that his actions were consistent with his bedrock belief that the economic health of American companies would take priority during his tenure, perhaps even over the physical health of American consumers.
"Because, first things first, are the people who live in America," Bush said, explaining his desire to fire up the U.S. economy, even if it meant disappointing other nations seeking a commitment to reduce emissions of gases that many scientists believe lead to global warming.
"We'll be working with Germany; we'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases," he said. "But I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers."
His approach so far, he suggested, provides a clear signal of how he will govern. "People are beginning to learn what my administration is like," he said.
Bush said that world leaders were getting to know him, too — and would be reassured in the process.
"I'm sure there were some concerns initially, because they didn't know me," he said, just before sitting down with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany to discuss, among other things, global warming. "And they heard all kinds of rumors about what our administration would be about. And now I have the chance to sit down and talk to them, face to face. I'm a pretty straightforward fellow."
True to his word, he said later in front of Schroeder that the global warming treaty "makes no economic sense."
For much of his news conference, the second of his fledgling administration, Bush displayed a firm set of views on energy policy and the economy, and he seemed most determined to convey his desire to increase the nation's gas and oil supplies. Using language that has built in a steady crescendo from the final days of his presidential campaign, Bush on Thursday declared the nation to be in the throes of an energy crisis.
"Circumstances have changed since the campaign," he said. "We are now in an energy crisis. And that's why I decided to not have mandatory caps on CO2, because in order to meet those caps, our nation would have had to have had, you know, a lot of natural gas immediately flow into the system, which is impossible. We don't have the infrastructure able to move natural gas."
He later amended his declaration of an energy crisis, confining it chiefly to California, where deregulation of the power industry has led to rolling blackouts.
The notion that the nation is in the grip of an energy crisis is not universally accepted. America consumes a quarter of the world's energy but still pays among the lowest prices, leading some critics to suggest that Bush's eagerness for aggressive oil and gas exploration is rooted in his own ties to the industry and its millions of dollars in contributions to his campaign.
Bush's warnings of a critical energy shortage did not include any recommendation that Americans adopt measures to conserve energy.
Bush has long advocated oil drilling in the Alaskan refuge, an area that environmentalists consider one of the jewels of federally protected lands. But over the past few weeks, Congress has quietly begun to squelch this plan through its budget resolutions.
Those who favor the drilling had estimated that finding gas there could yield $1.2 billion in energy revenues next year. But both the House and Senate omitted this figure from their budgets, signaling that they do not expect such revenues to materialize because they do not expect the drilling to be approved.
Bush said that if plans to drill in the Alaskan refuge are stymied, he would look for additional oil sources in Canada's adjacent Northwest Territories.
"It's a big, vast region of natural gas," the president said. "And it's important for us to explore, encourage exploration, work with the Canadians to get pipelines coming out of the Northwest Territories to the United States."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the minority whip, said Bush's remarks Thursday reflected his realization that there was too much political opposition in Congress to allow the drilling.
"He recognizes that ANWR isn't going to pass," Reid said, using the acronym for the wildlife refuge. "The American people don't want it."
Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman, said after the news conference that Bush was not conceding defeat on the Alaska drilling. He acknowledged that achieving his goal through the budget looked like a dead end, but he said that the president would look for other vehicles, like an energy bill or an appropriations bill, to carry the measure. But Bush seemed to sense the enormous political obstacles to drilling in Alaska. "There's a lot of other areas we can explore," he said. "There's gas in our hemisphere, and the fundamental question is, where's it going to come from? I'd like it to be American gas."
But he remained firm in his larger goal. "I'm interested in getting more energy supply, so that businesses can grow and people can heat their homes," he said. "We've got a shortage of energy in America."