Obama seeks changes to oil industry

PITTSBURGH - Seizing on a disastrous oil spill to advance a cause, President Barack Obama called on Congress Wednesday to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and pass a clean-energy bill that he says would help the nation end its dependence on fossil fuels.

Obama predicted that he would find the political support for legislation that would dramatically alter the way Americans fuel their homes and cars, including placing a price on carbon pollution, even though such legislation is politically divisive and remains bogged in the Senate.

"The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months," Obama told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University. "I will continue to make the case for a clean-energy future wherever and whenever I can, and I will work with anyone to get this done. And we will get it done."

Obama said the country's continuing dependence on fossil fuels "will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk."

The president spoke as Americans remain deeply frustrated by the worst oil spill in the nation's history, which is still spewing crude in the Gulf of Mexico more than a month after a BP drilling rig sank.

Wednesday, BP's latest effort to contain the spill hit a snag when a diamond-edged saw became stuck in a thick pipe on the blown-out well. The saw was freed 12 hours later.

The proposal to roll back oil company tax breaks is something Obama has discussed in the past, and included in his most recent budget proposal, but it's not been a talking point of late.

Now, with the spill casting Big Oil in the worst possible light, calling for the elimination of oil company subsidies is one more way for Obama to show the public he wants to hold the industry accountable.

Obama said the Gulf spill "may prove to be a result of human error - or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety" - but that deepwater drilling is inherently risky and the United States cannot rely solely on fossil fuels.