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 Bush's speech on Tuesday at Rice Energy Inc., a natural gas and
oil company in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, will mark
his latest foray into the detailed policy plans he would pursue if
elected in November 2016.
As rival Donald Trump steals the headlines and leads the polls, Bush
has been building a detailed policy agenda with the aim of
convincing Republican voters he has the can-do spirit and
intellectual heft to pursue a conservative agenda.
A campaign aide said Bush will pledge to lift the four-decades-old
ban on exporting crude oil and work to speed up exports of natural
gas.
He will also call for permitting construction of the Canada-to-Texas
Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada Corp's project to bring Canadian
oil to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico via Nebraska. The Obama
administration has stalled this project and Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton has pledged to block it.
Bush frequently says on the campaign trail that he would seek to
take greater advantage of America's burgeoning energy resources to
create jobs and trigger higher U.S. economic growth of up to 4
percent a year.
Bush will also call for giving states more authority over energy
decisions, the aide said.
A variety of Republicans have said the United States should export
more natural gas to European allies to allow Europe to wean itself
from Russian natural gas and punish Russian President Vladimir Putin
for his aggression against Ukraine.
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Exporting crude oil would be a boon to domestic producers of crude
who have been hampered by a worldwide plunge in oil prices.
A president can end the export ban without congressional approval.
Oil producers are pressing for a full repeal of the ban to keep the
domestic drilling boom alive. The issue will be debated in Congress
this fall, but sponsors of legislation to lift the ban need to
secure more Democratic votes.
Bush this week in a speech pledging to cut back on the Obama
administration's increase in regulations said he would block Obama's
Clean Power Plan, the name for new carbon emission limits on power
plants.
For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, “Tales
from the Trail” (http://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/).
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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