White House Rejects Linking Arms Deals With OPEC Output.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on April 24 said Senate Democrats were "barking up the wrong tree" by threatening to hold up arms deals with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC states unless they agreed to increase crude oil production. "The last thing that we want to do is increase our dependence on foreign sources of energy", she said, accusing Democrats of blocking efforts to boost domestic oil and gas production.

Perino pointed out: "Arms deals are not favours that we do for friends. They are in our national strategic interest and something that we work closely with Congress on".

Senators Charles Schumer (Democrat-New York); Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota); Bob Casey (D-Pa); and Bernie Sanders (D-Vt) were urging President Bush to use leverage with OPEC or put multi-million dollar arms deals in jeopardy with Congress. Perino said: "The suggestion they made today is not one we could support".

Bush's request for OPEC states to raise up their crude oil production has so far been ignored, triggering hand-wringing on Capitol Hill. Bush made the request during his tour of the GCC, including visits to Kuwait, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, in January.

The US is heavily dependent on OPEC for imported oil. In 2007, almost 45% of US imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products came from OPEC countries, based on data from the US Energy Department's Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The White House continued to push back against pressure to stop filling the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that could shave five to 24 cents of the price of a gallon of gasoline.

The Bush administration routinely says the SPR should not be used to try to manipulate prices. Perino said: "The purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is to provide the United States with oil in the event of a severe disruption of supply. It has been ineffective when it has been used to manipulate the price in the past, and the administration continues to fill the reserve at a very modest rate and we don't believe the fill rate has a meaningful impact on oil supplies".