By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Republican presidential
candidate Jeb Bush will call for a decades-old ban on exporting
U.S. crude oil to be lifted in a speech next week that will lay
out an aggressive approach to growing jobs in the energy sector.
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
TRP.TO 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.
Exporting crude oil would be a boon to domestic producers of
crude who have been hampered by a worldwide plunge in oil prices
CLc1 LCOc1 .
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/).