To prepare for the primary election, 10/11 brings you a week-long look at where the candidates stand on a number of issues. Today's issue is energy.

As gas prices soar and critics claim ethanol mandates hurt the economy, 10/11 wanted to know where Nebraska's U.S. Senate candidates stand on energy policy.

Republican Mike Johanns mentioned a commonly-heard theme -- energy independence. For him, it means more oil drilling, but in an environmentally responsible way. He also wants to streamline regulations on oil refineries, and he still supports ethanol -- with some changes.

"Ethanol is a piece of the overall puzzle. Corn-based ethanol is also a piece of the overall puzzle But we also need to take the next steps. The next steps are cellulosic ethanol. Nebraska can be a leader here. There isn't any reason why we can't harness the energy of this state, and literally take the next step for our country to lessen our dependence on foreign oil," Johanns said.

Pat Flynn also favors more U.S. oil exploration. He said restrictions on drilling in places like the arctic national wildlife refuge have been a tremendous disservice to Americans, but he believes federal policy subsidizing ethanol production isn't working.

"The Federal government mandating anything starts getting the special interests. That's an intrusion of our liberties, and I think they ought to get out of the energy business completely. Let the market design itself, and see what we come up with .I mean, to me, the federal government, if they were given the duty of discovering oil, they would've never found it," Flynn said.

Scott Kleeb said his priority is reducing dependence on foreign oil. But in an interview, he did not express support for drilling in areas considered environmentally sensitive.

Kleeb wants to invest federal dollars to develop new bio fuel technology and production facilities. He said it's a national security and economic issue.

"I think we just really need to be supporting energy production in states like Nebraska. Renewable fuels that we can go back to, that once that oil well is tapped out, that we've gotta go somewhere else. We've gotta continue to grow fuel year after year after year and support the economies here in Nebraska. That's what we should be going to," Kleeb said.

"This constant chase for the other field that we haven't quite found yet, and billions of dollars we spend doing that, we should be spending money that actually supports economies here in Nebraska," Kleeb said.

Tony Raimondo also wants to speed up research into cellulosic ethanol, using switchgrass as the raw material. But he said it's time to reconsider drilling for oil in places previously off limits, such as the arctic national wildlife refuge. Here's what he has to say on those topics.

"Ethanol is good. I think that there's a little learning curve that we're going through right now, both in balancing the food supply, and also the logistics for ethanol. But I think ethanol is good for Nebraska in total. I do think we need to expedite our research to move into the next stage of switchgrass as we call it," he said.

"We can approach those with so much more environmentally friendly tools, and so much more discipline, than we did 20 and 30 years ago, that those opportunities need to be looked at."