Obama backs limited drilling, tapping oil reserve

Barack Obama put forward a broad energy plan Monday designed to end U.S. reliance on imported oil within 10 years and shore up his standing amid a tightening White House race and high-anxiety over gas prices. 

Obama's new proposal, though, includes two significant reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had steadfastly fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation's emergency oil stockpile to relieve pump prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.

Not only did Obama push for drawing from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he also reiterated his changing position on offshore drilling — first revealed last Friday — suggesting that he could live with it if done in an environmentally sound way and as part of a bipartisan energy compromise. 

In a speech in Michigan, the Democratic presidential nominee in waiting also endorsed long-term work on hybrid cars and renewable energy sources.

"Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face," the Illinois Democrat told a supportive audience as he embarked on a week to focus on energy issues. "It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy," he said.

Presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, speaking in Pennsylvania, again advocated more oil drilling off the U.S. coast. "Anybody who says that we can achieve energy independence without using and increasing these existing energy resources either doesn't have the experience to understand the challenge that we face or isn't giving the American people some straight talk," he said.

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