Sen. Hatch: U.S. has gotten too 'radical' on environment

A prominent Republican senator said on Monday that the United States had gone “too far into the radical environmentalist camp” after unrest in the Middle East that contributed to a rise in oil prices.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters after a speech that energy development helped spark economic growth, and that he hoped people had begun to realize that the United States has plenty of natural resources.

“We’ve got to wake up in this country,” Hatch said, raising the specter of $5-per-gallon gas prices. “We can’t run the country without energy. And yet the radical environmentalists are shutting the country down.”

Hatch also said that he was having trouble getting Democrats to join with him on cultivating natural gas, one of his pet issues, and also dubbed America “the Saudi Arabia of coal.”

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill this week, where he is expected to be asked by Republicans about current restrictions on offshore oil drilling. 

Oil prices have been fluctuating amid the strife in Libya, hitting $100 a barrel last week for the first time since President Obama entered the White House. Administration officials expressed concern about the cost of oil last week, but also said they were confident the economy could handle a spike in prices. 

Hatch pushed during last year’s lame-duck session of Congress, unsuccessfully, to pass a natural-gas measure that aimed to reduce demand for oil.