BEAVER SPRINGS — High gas prices and the war in Iraq were the two primary issues on the minds of residents in western Snyder County who came out Monday morning to meet with U.S. Rep. Chris Carney.

Speaking during his public session at the Middlecreek Community Center, Carney, D-10 of Dimock, said rising fuel costs are not matching supply and demand.

“Since the first of the year, the demand for gas has declined and the number of miles driven has declined,” Carney said.

He attributes big oil companies high profit margins to speculation and the weakening American dollar overseas.

“What we need to do is bring the speculators into the light,” the congressman said, adding, “Weak money overseas doesn’t buy as much anymore.”

Carney said the current perception of the United States’ economy overseas has also impacted America’s oil crisis.

“I think we are in a recession or teetering right on the brink of one. We need to start drilling domestically,”

Congress recently passed the “Use it or Loose it Act,” pushing big oil companies to drill on the untapped 68 million acres of onshore and offshore government land they have under lease.

“The oil companies can’t get a free ride on this anymore.” Becoming independent from foreign oil by tapping resources and supplementing those resources with alternative energy are the solutions to America’s dependence on foreign oil, he said.

“We are capable of weening ourselves off of Middle East oil.” France has made the decision to build more nuclear power plants, which Carney said he would like to see happen in the United States. Brazil, he added, has turned sugar cane into ethanol for automobile fuel.

Following the meeting, Carney said Pennsylvania needs to utilize natural resources for alternative energy.

“We have in the northeast and center part of Pennsylvania a lot of things that we need to do. We have coal and we can start leveraging the clean coal technology. We also can grow a lot of renewable energies.”

When asked about the war in Iraq, Carney cited the increasingly serious situation in Afghanistan, where nine U.S. troopers were illed on Sunday.

“The war in Iraq is hurting the overall ability to conduct war on terror,” Carney said. “We’re barely holding our own in Afghanistan. As we switch out of Iraq, I can imagine that we will put more troops into Afghanistan.”