This is the question I would like answered by the Bush administration:

“Tony, exactly how much crude oil was President Bush depositing daily into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? And did he actually suspend the program temporarily or did President Bush just decrease the amount being pumped daily into the reserve?”

You see, Dan, this information must be classified since Bush didn’t say specifically how much was being deposited, which led to a lot of people apparently guessing at the amount.

In the day that followed Bush’s announcement, I heard three different figures mentioned: 7,000 barrels a day, 30,000 barrels a day and 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Strange. Or at least, it sounded strange to me because I seem to be one of only a few people who realize that Bush must come up with 250 MILLION barrels of crude oil if he is to top off our nation’s strategic “gas tank.”

250 MILLION barrels? Well, you see, Congress has authorized (on Bush/Cheney’s orders?) an increase in the SPR’s storage capacity from about 750 million barrels of crude to 1 billion barrels of crude. Ergo, Bush needs 250 million barrels of crude oil (import oil mainly?) to fulfill his order.

This must be the program Bush has supposedly temporarily suspended…until after the November elections. However, in a news article I read last week, a reporter mentioned that Bush had only decreased how much he was depositing…not suspended it.

But, what does this all mean?

If the lower amounts that people were apparently guessing at are close to what Bush was depositing, then it would take anywhere from 10 to 80 years to fill up the reserve…based on the 250 MILLION barrel requirement.

But, what if Bush/Cheney had secretly decided to top off the reserve by year’s end? Maybe in preparation for going to war with Iran?

This deadline would necessitate 1 to 3 MILLION barrels of crude oil being deposited each day into the reserve.

Aaaaah. And this would definitely have had a major impact on our nation’s oil supplies, and how much was making it to the oil refineries to be processed into gasoline. Therefore, gasoline prices at the pump, starting a couple of months ago after this program began, would have skyrocketed.

Now, I must admit, Dan, that I am just guessing that this is what caused much of the recent spike in gas prices. I may be wrong. And I am aware that other factors contributed to the gasoline price hikes. But, isn’t anyone suspicious that Bush mentioned this program’s cessation at a news conference where he was addressing what steps could be taken to lower gas prices?

And yet, based on the subsequent guesses I heard, the amount being deposited apparently would have had a negligible effect on gasoline prices, as per what the guessers were saying. Unless, of course, the amount Bush was having pumped daily into the increased-capacity Petroleum Reserve was actually a very substantial amount of crude oil, probably over 1 million barrels a day…which would have significantly impacted gasoline prices.

Dan, I smell a cover-up. So, this is the question I would ask Tony Snow. And how he answered the question would say a lot concerning whether my suspicion is warranted or not. Of course, my guess is that he would duck it by saying he’d check into it and get back later with the information…which I doubt would actually happen.

May 9th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The NYT is reporting that jury selection for Fitz’s Chicago hiring trial will begin tomorrow. Does that mean Fitz won’t be in DC meeting with the grand jury?

Fitz has plenty of superstars in the Chicago office, including Patrick Collins who tried the George Ryan case. Deep bench there.

How come she never asks Israel to “renounce violence”? Hamas has been following a unilateral truce for the past year, during which time it has renounced violence, in that it hasn’t committed any, while Israel has been bombing Gaza and the West Bank with happy abandon, and at the same time is “violently” stealing Palestinian land through the construction of its illegal wall and the seeding of its colonies with more and more extremely violent settlers. Yet it’s Hamas that must “renounce violence”?

I think I’ve gone through the Looking Glass.

But one should note, also, the typically clumsy and ham-fisted “diplomacy†involved in the way he dealt with Putin versus Nazarbayev.

It’s one thing to play off dictatorial Khazakstan against human rights violations in Russia, which is a self-evident contradiction. But this approach is also counterproductive in terms of the current objective of Bushco to win support of Putin in the Security Council for their strategy of dealing with Iran.

sorry, may I console you about the posole on your console? or would you rather stew in your own juices? :~)

‘Soon, proof (using geometric logic) will be offered that a duplicate Cheney exists, a sinister sort not at all like the hail-fellow-well-met chap that we all know, and he’d have been produced if they (they, of course, being the howling froth-flecked liberal mobs Hell-bent on a torchlit necktie party) hadn’t pulled the OVP out of action.’

‘Of course, they’re only trying to protect their fellow treasonators’

;>)

“it’s time to clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.”

And the $$$ quote:

“My administration will ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.”