Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Another telling move
The State of the Union address is ussually a boring an uninteresting speech that best serves as a temporary cure for insomia. Yesterdays was no exception - it knocked me out after about 20 minutes.
Yet when I read the transcript this morning I found that there was at least one interesting little tidbit of information. Buried in some boring non-sense about weening the U.S. off of foriegn oil (we've been hearing this for thirty years now) was this:
For those wondering what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is background can be obtained here. Essentially it is a way for the U.S. to have a supply of oil in case its access to oil, and particularly foriegn oil, is disrupted.
This is interesting on a couple of levels. First, it is goingn to cost a pretty penny. With oil currently priced at $50 per barrel and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holding about 688 million barrels of oil doubling it will cost about $34 billion dollars. Then again, the U.S. pisses that much away in Iraq in a few months so I guess by their standards it isn't that much.
The second interesting point is really a question - why do they want to double it? Particularly given that they are supposedly going to reduce their dependence on oil. Doesn't make much sense does it?
Actually, if you look at their recent noise about Iran it does. First Bush calls Iran part of the "evil empire". Then he starts making military appointments clearly aimed at Iran. And now he is doubling the petroleum reserve meant largely to protect the U.S. against losing access to Persian Gulf oil.
The storm clouds are gathering.
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Yet when I read the transcript this morning I found that there was at least one interesting little tidbit of information. Buried in some boring non-sense about weening the U.S. off of foriegn oil (we've been hearing this for thirty years now) was this:
And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
For those wondering what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is background can be obtained here. Essentially it is a way for the U.S. to have a supply of oil in case its access to oil, and particularly foriegn oil, is disrupted.
This is interesting on a couple of levels. First, it is goingn to cost a pretty penny. With oil currently priced at $50 per barrel and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holding about 688 million barrels of oil doubling it will cost about $34 billion dollars. Then again, the U.S. pisses that much away in Iraq in a few months so I guess by their standards it isn't that much.
The second interesting point is really a question - why do they want to double it? Particularly given that they are supposedly going to reduce their dependence on oil. Doesn't make much sense does it?
Actually, if you look at their recent noise about Iran it does. First Bush calls Iran part of the "evil empire". Then he starts making military appointments clearly aimed at Iran. And now he is doubling the petroleum reserve meant largely to protect the U.S. against losing access to Persian Gulf oil.
The storm clouds are gathering.
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