BRUNDIDGE – Strong environmentalist opposition to approaches that would prompt less dependency on foreign oil is costing the U.S. $200 billion a year and contributing to a possible recession, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, told a group of peanut producers on Thursday.

The farmers met at the Robert E. Barr Nutritional Center in Brundidge to discuss the future of a much needed farm bill.

But it only took minutes for the conversation to shift to high diesel fuel prices. Some farmers said they are using as much as 500 gallons of fuel a day in preparation for spring planting.

“What are we gonna do in the future? Is oil gonna get higher and higher and next year be $5 a gallon or is it gonna end, or no one knows?” Louisville producer Jeffery Dykes asked Sessions. “I talked to a soldier who said things are better (in Iraq). They got all that oil over there. Look like we’ve got friends over there but we’re not doing anything (to get oil).”
Sessions said the hike in oil prices has become a political issue for foreign countries and environmental influences.

“The national oil companies own 85 percent of the oil… and they’re negotiating politically and jacking us around… It’s such a complex issue but I … understand the increase in the cost of energy hits us hard,” he said.

“If a family spends $50 more a month for the same amount of gasoline they were getting last year, that’s $50 more they can’t spend on their families and their groceries, and it is a factor of our economic slowdown and maybe recession, if we get that far.”

Sessions said the country spends $200 billion a year to buy 60 percent of its oil and natural gas for vehicles from foreign sources when efforts to drill for oil in Alaska, Colorado and Utah are pinned up by some environmentalists.

Sessions said an oil shale in the Colorado and Utah region would supply oil needs for 100 years, but heating the shale to get the oil would emit more carbon dioxide than some legislative language allows.

In Alaska, Sessions said oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has also been considered off limits.

Sessions said some environmentalists tend not to support nuclear power either.

“It’s one of the most frustrating, idiotic things I’ve seen in Congress and we’re paying a price for it, I believe, today… We can’t be this dependent on foreign sources,” he said.

“Nuclear power plants are a winner across the board because there’s no pollution and no CO2. Some (environmentalists) are coming around, but most oppose nuclear power.”