Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday called for a substantial increase in domestic drilling for oil and other natural resources, including in environmentally sensitive areas, saying that only increased production – and not new technology – will satisfy the nation’s demand for energy:

“We are an economy that runs on petroleum.

Some 20 million barrels of it a day. That can and will change over time, but it will be a very long time,” said Cheney, former head of U.S. oil company Halliburton. “We’d be doing the whole country a favor if more of that oil were produced here at home.”