Oil, Schmoil

I didn’t watch the SOTU speech last night, I was in a statistics class, but reading the news articles and postings on conservative websites (no need to read lefty sites as they’d just be demanding to know why the criminal Bush hasn’t yet been arrested) it appears that the main thing people are taking away is Bush’s call to get off of Mideast Oil.


Bush chastizing Americans for using oil. Will this be Bush's "maliase" speech?
Bush stated that he hoped Ethanol and “other break through technologies” would help the US achieve the “great goal” of reducing Mideast oil consumption by 75% over the next two decades.

After reading that my head exploded.


69 mpg in combined driving, not bad for a Frenchie.
All I can say is I don’t get it. Yes, I’m all for new technologies, such as Citroen’s new 69 mpg diesel hybrid and have for the last 16 years been a proponent of hydrogen, but what is this continual mindset emanating from Washington that the Middle East has all the oil?! It’s like a urban legend gone horribly wrong. What’s that you ask? They don’t have all the oil? But surely they do you insist, remembering back to the 456,000 times you heard the major news producers state clearly that the Middle East does.

Known Middle East oil reserves with full exploration, after this it's gone. (in barrels)


Known oil reserves in ANWR, Shales and Tar after minimal exporation.


Estimated total maximun oil reserves in ANWR, Shales and Tar after full exploration.



And so with 2.2 to 12.3 trillion barrels North America has anywhere from 3 to an astounding 18 times the oil in the entire Middle East, please explain to me exactly, and in simple words so that I may understand, why is it we are so God damn hamstrung by the oil barons of Islamostan. Where are our oil barons?

There are, as I see it only two explanations.

A) The leftists, eco-nutters and other anti-Western leaning people have spent a productive 30 years shaping the rules of the battle field for oil and the “protection” of lands that even a know ultra conservative, brown shirted Republican, with a radical Republican congress and newly super duper conservative Supreme Court (which is no doubt now flipping coins to see whether it’s the 14th, 15th or 19th amendment that’s first to go) is afraid to even broach the idea of using our own oil for a change.

Or…

B) The Prince is alive and well, looking forward to the day when his minions bleed the Saracens dry so that only then he may tap his incomparable supplies and lord over the swarthy savages as God certainly intended.

Nuanced? Nope, you have to buy me a beer for that.

ANWR, Oil Shale, Tar Sands. Just three links out of many. Not reported in big media – including Fox – but it’s real and I encourage you to investigate for yourself.