With oil prices this high, why is Bush still filling the Strategic Oil Reserve?

[Lone_Wolf]

This is absolutely ridiculous.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20080422%5cACQDJON200804220830DOWJONESDJONLINE000372.htm&&mypage=newsheadlines&title=UPDATE:US%20To%20Keep%20Filling%20Oil%20Reserve%20Despite%20Price%20-Dep%20Secretary


"UPDATE:US To Keep Filling Oil Reserve Despite Price -Dep Secretary


(adds more details, comments, and background)

ROME -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. believes current crude prices are too high for consumers globally, echoing many analysts and other governments, but will continue filling its strategic petroleum reserve despite record prices, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffrey Kupfer said Tuesday.

"We see no need to change the policy," he told journalists here at an industry conference.

Kupfer said the U.S.'s strategic oil reserve was a vital cushion needed in order to make up for any big supply interruptions in the future.

A growing chorus of U.S. policymakers have called on the Bush administration to halt oil purchases for the reserve with prices trading at record levels."

[Saturday]

1. Good question. nt

[Qutzupalotl]

2. If there were an interruption in the flow

this country would be royally screwed. No trucks to transport goods anywhere. Most people couldn't get to work. We need a backup, despite the prices. Europe's been paying a lot more for a long time now.

[predfan]

8. Honestly, I'll gleefully pay European gas prices, if you figure them in Euros

instead of our sucky dollar prices, and I get universal healthcare in the deal. Doesn't much of the high European taxes on gasoline go toward healthcare?

[krispos42]

3. He's going to attack Iran

Which will disrupt the entire MidEast oil supply.

[asjr]

9. I think he is just waiting for his term to

end and he is going to take the supply home to that pig ranch with him.

[tridim]

4. More money stolen from the treasury and transferred to his oil-buddy's pockets

It's the Bush/Cheney plan in action.

[shraby]

5. He needs to get as much of the treasury

into his buds pockets as he can..he only has until next January.

[predfan]

6. The Bush administration has no reason to see lower prices.

They're leaving town, heading back to the private sector, leaving a mess that'll take a generation to clean up, if ever. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi men, women and children. Not to mention a poisoned country due to all the depleted uranium we're dropped on them, where cancer rates are going through the roof.

What a bunch of criminals.

[RB TexLa]

7. To protect against supply disruptions

[RaleighNCDUer]

13. That is

To protect against - the planned - supply disruptions.

Such as the international embargo against the US when we bomb Iran.

[DefenseLawyer]

10. Plan B was to just drive dump trucks full of cash to the doorstep of Big Oil

A method that has worked exceedingly well for Blackwater and KBR, but this way is less of a hassle.

[Warpy]

11. I think it's his Iran war stash

The Reserve was supposed to have been used to drive down prices on the spot market by releasing a flood of cheap oil when prices started to hyperinflate, but Stupid has been filling it to overflowing for the past several years, filling it with overpriced oil instead of using it to drive prices down for the benefit of the American people.

These evil men know that there will be an embargo by OPEC if they commit one more act of imperial aggression against another oil producing country. In order to fuel the military, they know they'll need domestic production plus whatever they can keep in the reserve that's supposed to be used to drive prices down.

I hate the fact that the best we can hope for now is a military coup if he tries to start another war. Congress has simply not done its job by refusing to remove these dangerous men from office.

[old mark]

12. Prices will keep going up...

...according to news report, crude oil, currently at about $117/bbl could go as high as $180/bbl before price stabilizes.
Since GWB is the Oil Company President, he probably already knows this, or knows somebody who knows.

mark

ADDED:Just read here that prediction is now for $200/bbl and soon.

[TheWraith]

14. To keep boosting the price of oil, of course.

Nobody really thought it had anything to do with "supply and demand," did they?

[Lone_Wolf]

15. Yeah... so much for the "free market."

This is just another giveaway to subsidize Big Oil's already obscene profits. Congress needs to do something.

[PVnRT]

16. Well, my rep (Ellsworth) has a bill in to stop that

Not that I'm wild about the guy, but at least he's trying. I doubt the oil interests will let it get out of subcommittee.