|
Houston: The US government can do nothing in the short-term to ease the pain of of a spike in fuel prices that is threatening to tip the economy into recession, a senior official at the Department of Energy said on Monday.
"It is clear that there is no 'silver bullet' here. It took us decades to get into the current energy situation and it is going to take us some time to get out of it," the department's acting deputy secretary Jeff Kupfer said.
US retail gasoline prices averaged $3.98 a gallon on Monday, up more than 25 per cent from a year ago tracking a dramatic surge in the price of crude oil, according to auto and travel group AAA's daily survey of about 100,000 service stations.
The head of the US Energy Information Administration said in New York on Monday that crude prices are likely to stay over $100 a barrel through 2009. Oil prices have risen six-fold since 2002 to around $130 a barrel as rising demand in China and other developing nations strains supply.
Economists have said that the spike in oil prices could trigger a recession in the US, already hard hit by a housing slowdown and credit crunch.
Solutions
Kupfer said the Department of Energy was seeking to navigate the US out of the energy crunch in the long-term by promoting alternative fuels, energy conservation, and additional production of conventional fuels around the globe.
He added that the US was asking the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to raise output to help meet rising demand from Asia. The more supply that Opec can put on the market, the better it would be for all of us," he said.
Gasoline
Fuel could cost $4.10
US gasoline prices will peak at a record average $4.10 a gallon later this month thanks to surging world oil prices, adding pressure to an already troubled US economy, the government's top energy forecaster said on Monday.
The price spike will cut into energy consumption in the US, but not enough to pull back the price of oil below $100 a barrel any time soon, Guy Caruso, head of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), said.
- Reuters
|
