by Matthew Hay Brown and David Nitkin

The White House is resisting bipartisan calls to halt new shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while gasoline prices at the pump continue to rise.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain today in asking President Bush to stop adding 60,000 barrels of oil each day the giant undergound caverns in Texas and Louisiana where the government keeps the reserve - a move they say would help reduce demand.

"Today the SPR is nearly 97 percent full," Pelosi told reporters today. "Independent experts report that suspending deliveries to SPR could cut as much as five cents on the low-end to 24 cents off a gallon of gas and provide real savings for families. ...

"Suspending delivery to SPR will not only increase supply, but impact energy prices by sending a signal to the market to stop runaway speculation."

The White House disagrees.

"The Administration continues to fill the reserve at a modest rate," spokesman Scott Stanzel said. "We don't believe the fill rates have a meaningful impact on oil supplies, as this oil equates to less than one tenth of one percent of daily world consumption. We continue to fill the reserve to provide an added layer of protection to the American people in cases of severe supply disruption."

Pelosi cited precedent for the move.

"Ahead of the first Gulf War, the first President Bush withdrew oil from the SPR. Withdrew oil from the SPR," she said. "We're not asking for that. President Clinton suspended SPR deliveries in 1995 and even the current President Bush withdrew oil from SPR and sold it on the market following Hurricane Katrina."

Pelosi repeated her call for Bush and congressional Republicans to support Democratic legislation to crack down on gasoline price gouging, hold OPEC accountable for price fixing and end tax breaks for oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy.

"I was in three states this weekend," she said. "I heard from veterans who said how the price of gasoline was preventing them from seeking the health care they needed because they had to travel so many miles to receive that health care. I spoke to workers whose regions where unemployment was high and in order for them to travel to jobs, it would cost them a great deal of money. They couldn't afford to go to work."

House Republican Leader John Boehner also reported hearing from voters about gasoline prices. He called suspending deliveries to the reserve "an idea worthy of discussion.

"But let's just be honest," he continued. "Republicans, over the last several cycles that we were in the majority, fought for energy bills that would include conservation, that would include alternative sources of energy, biofuels, more nuclear energy, and more domestic production of oil and gas" - including drilling offshore and in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve.

"We were fought every step of the way in that process about getting more domestic production. And today we're paying the price. And so this latest gambit, while it may save 5 cents or 10 cents a gallon, we could have been saving dollars a gallon."