Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Titus announces energy plan she says will cut pump prices

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Seizing on public outrage over high gasoline prices, Democratic congressional candidate Dina Titus picked a Lucky Stop gas station in Henderson this morning as the backdrop for the roll-out of her comprehensive energy plan.

She noted that prices have fallen recently -- $3.92 a gallon, according to the sign behind her -- but said "there's no guarantee they will stay down."

Her plan, she said, involves short-term and long-term solutions that will "help now, bridge the gap and plan for the future."

Titus, a state senator and former Democratic nominee for governor, is challenging incumbent Rep. Jon Porter, a Republican who has been largely absent from the campaign trail this summer.

Among the immediate steps she would take if elected: tap the country's strategic petroleum reserve, crack down on oil speculators with tougher regulations and eliminate the tariff on Brazilian ethanol. She also supports offshore drilling, with the condition that it would be regulated by individual states.

Notably, much of those measures are more in line with those being proposed by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

Specifically, McCain supports offshore drilling and repealing the tariff on Brazilian ethanol. The presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, opposes both.

In the long term, Titus said she would repeal tax breaks for oil companies and redirect those incentives toward the development of renewables. Such a

move, she said, could make Nevada the epicenter of of the renewable energy industry. Titus also supports establishing a federal energy portfolio standard, comparable to the one Nevada has already enacted. (Twenty percent of Nevada's energy must come from renewable sources by 2015.)

She also supports investing in new biofuel technology.

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