Heading out to the lake for the weekend will be a more expensive proposition this summer, as Minnesotans feel the pain at the pump. Whether you drive a gas guzzler or a hybrid vehicle, the cost of gas hurts.

My hope was that as oil prices rose, so too would the ire of my colleagues in Congress for the oil companies that are gouging middle-class Americans. Unfortunately, many in Congress are casting about to put the responsibility on just about everyone but Big Oil.

As Big Oil’s cheerleaders explain it, gas prices are high because oil companies just aren’t drilling enough. But domestic oil supplies aren’t stagnant because oil companies lack access to oil-rich areas; it’s because oil companies are deliberately choosing not to use the leases they’ve already got.

Today, oil companies hold leases to about 92 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore. Roughly 67 million of those acres — more than 70 percent of the area they own the rights to — are not being used for production. These are areas that oil companies are authorized to start drilling, which have the potential to produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day. This would nearly double total U.S. oil production!

Why is Big Oil sitting on all this unused land? Simple: Because increasing production would increase supply and threaten the record profits the five major oil companies posted last year — $40.6 billion for Exxon-Mobile alone.

What’s less clear is why President Bush and his allies in Congress are talking about giving Big Oil access to even more land, when the companies aren’t using what they’ve already got.

It’s time to call Big Oil on the carpet. Instead of political gimmicks that give oil companies the right to drill on even more taxpayer-owned land, we need to insist they first make use of the land that they’ve already leased. That’s why I’m co-sponsoring “use it or lose it” legislation that will force oil companies to either produce oil on the land they’re leasing or turn the leases over to a company that will.

As the price of gasoline increased, Congress succeeded in forcing the president to stop adding even more oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, putting more oil back on the market. And the House recently passed legislation to permit the Justice Department to take action against foreign governments and oil tycoons that engage in oil price-fixing.

And just this week, the House passed legislation to crack down on price-gouging by Big Oil and give the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate and punish companies that artificially inflate the price of energy. These are common-sense solutions that may help ease the burden of skyrocketing gas prices, and I am disappointed that President Bush has opposed each and every one of them.

But more remains to be done. We need to be honest about our situation: Americans can’t drill our way out of this energy crisis, so we need to change our priorities and use American ingenuity to develop affordable new fuels.

Even while reaping record profits, the major oil companies are still receiving billions of dollars annually in subsidies from the taxpayers. I think we should shift that money into research and development of new energy sources, but so far, we’ve been unable to overcome the opposition of President Bush and his allies in Congress.

Real solutions to our energy crisis won’t be found by simply giving Big Oil access to more taxpayer-owned land. We can start by going after the price-fixers, energy market speculators, price-gougers and others who are driving oil prices higher.

And we can start by sending a simple message to Big Oil: It’s time to use it or lose it.

Tim Walz, DFL-Mankato, is the 1st District congressman.