From bloomberg.com: Trump Proposes Selling Half U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve
...because this will help reduce the national debt. Brilliant idea, right?
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds over 687 million barrels of oil, meant to be quickly available in case of emergencies, military needs, and to deter other oil-producing nations from manipulating the market.
That seems like a lot of oil, but just for perspective...half of the U.S. reserve would meet about 3.5 days of the current global demand for oil, and about 17.5 days of the current U.S. demand for oil.
Setting aside the fact that selling half (or all of it) wouldn’t even begin to make a dent in the deficit, I can’t help but wonder…
Given that oil prices are historically low these days, it seems like an interesting time to sell off U.S. oil reserves, thus making us more dependent on OPEC. At current oil prices, the two greatest beneficiaries of such a sale would be Russia and Saudi Arabia.
It seems like someone in a business relationship with Russia might stand to gain quite a lot as the Russians sell more oil. And gosh...maybe you could do something like bring a former oil company CEO into your government to make it all easier.
And if one were indebted to, let's say Russia, and something (perhaps conflict in the Middle East) sparked an oil crisis, then our depleted reserves would create a situation where one might have to lift sanctions on, let's say Russia, to increase the oil supply.
And there’s this little detail:
In 2015, Exxon asked for a special waiver of U.S. sanctions on Russia because they planned a joint venture with Russia’s Rosneft to drill in the Black Sea. Exxon argued that it could lose its contractual exploration rights there if it did not begin drilling operations by the end of 2017. Let’s see...which oil company did Tillerson head up? Oh, that’s right..Exxon.
So, we have a President whose secretary of state used to be the head of Exxon. A President who is known for parroting the ideas and suggestions of whoever most recently flattered him. A President who just visited Saudi Arabia. A President who is under investigation for collusion with Russia. And now he announces that he wants to make the U.S. more vulnerable to world energy markets?
He doesn’t stop with selling off half of our reserves. Trump’s proposal “...also seeks to boost government revenues by allowing oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, ending the practice of sharing oil royalties with states along the Gulf of Mexico and selling off electricity transmission lines in the West.”
And as usual, the plans of the Hypocrite-in-Chief directly contradict his previous Tweets: “Tell Saudi Arabia and others that we want (demand!) free oil for the next ten years or we will not protect their private Boeing 747s. Pay up!”
Just when I think that Trump’s proposals can’t be any more outrageous, something like this comes to light. I wonder how much more blatantly he’ll have to undermine U.S. interests to get Republicans to finally acknowledge that he’s got to go.