Addicted to Oil: The Bush Legacy

President George W. Bush came into office as the "oil president," then immediately following September 11, he became the "war president." But he is now returning to his roots by defiantly pushing oil exploration due to rising gas prices. Bush wants Congress to open up offshore lands and protected Alaskan areas for oil and gas extraction. On Monday, he lifted a presidential moratorium on drilling for oil and natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf.

"The time for action is now," Mr. Bush said with customary bluster from the Rose Garden. "Failure to act is unacceptable," he continued, pointing the finger at all those Prius-driving Democrats in Congress for being obstructionists. By his action, he was removing an executive order that had been first issued by his father in 1990.

Ultimately, oil and blood don't always mix in that family.

By saying that Congress was "the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources," Bush was peddling a lie by promising instant relief at the pump.

There's a lot wrong with the picture that Bush painted in the Rose Garden. And it's not just due to the potential for environmental degradation, including oil spills and the destruction of marine life, but because the fossil fuel in the ground will take years to remove and won't have any effect on today's prices at the pump. Nor will the gas or oil recovered amount to more than three or five percent of America's energy needs.

When it comes to oil, the Republicans are pumping up the volume to the dismay of Democrats. In his role as industry cheerleader, Bush is pure Texan crude by playing partisan politics with petrol. Unlike some other members of the Bush clan who made a tidy fortune drilling for oil, the young George W. was a Lone Star wash-out when it came to running his own oil-drilling and energy businesses. The money he did make was from investors, dubious business connections, and by heavily leaning on family connections to bail him out when he encountered financial difficulties. Plenty of shady accounting practices facilitated the transfer of funds into W's pockets during his tenure as a West Texas oilman. (The late Molly Ivins presented a well-told tale of his business affairs in her book Bushwhacked.)

So, it's hard to take much stock in whatever Bush has to say about oil or energy policy. His stance on this issue have always been entropic, misguided, and typically wrong. Remember how his administration kept insisting that money for the war in Iraq was going to be paid out in Iraqi oil revenues? That fiction was immediately put to rest within months of "Mission Accomplished" when Al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents began blowing up pipelines. Five years later, only a fraction of Iraq's decrepit refineries and pumping are fully functioning.

That is not to say that oil and gas giants like Chevron, BP, and Exxon haven't profited obscenely during the Bush years. They are delightfully bobbing on a sea of tax credits and record profits.

When Bush came into office, a gallon of gas cost about a buck and a half. When he vacates the Oval Office, don't be surprised if a gallon tops off above $5, maybe $6. Which means that within the space of eight years, it will cost four times as much to fill up your vehicle.

Rather than push for energy conservation or even decrying global climate change, Bush's tepid, do-nothing-now response to the crisis has always been dangerously reckless and shortsighted. Ethanol-based fuel is essentially a crock, and is only driving up the price of food. Bush loves the idea of hydrogen-cell fueled vehicles, but that is only one approach amid a spate of tomorrow's solutions, and by tomorrow, we're talking another decade at the earliest. Meanwhile, the technology for increased solar and wind power is available now but is regretfully under-utilized.

On the topic of greenhouse gases, this administration is all hot air. Under Bush's watch, the EPA has been marginalized and politicized, with scientific recommendations being inked out in offical reports and replaced by specious assertions. You can sense Cheney's fingerprints everywhere in this chain-of-command. And now that the Clean Air Act was just declared immune from regulating greenhouse gases, you must wonder at the continued chutzpa or blindness of the White House which denies the obvious: the earth is heating up faster than an electric chair on Texas death row.

When the White House rejected the EPA's previous suggestion that the 1970 Clean Air Act was an effective for addressing global climate change, press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush is committed to further reductions but there is a "right way and a wrong way to deal with climate change."

Bush's way has been to reject the notion of seriously considering climate change, though he has come around recently to suggest that something should be done. Just not now. Judging by his actions at the Group of Eight conference in Japan, something (hopefully) will be done to cut emissions -- by year 2050. When it will be much too late.

Sounding more and more like Al Gore, who presciently raised the alarm of global warming, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced his concerns that the Bush administration did not believe it should do anything about global warming On ABC's This Week he maintained that any move at this point against climate change would lack meaning. "If they would have done something this year, I would have thought it was bogus anyway," he said. "You don't really have an effect by doing something six months before you leave office. It doesn't sound to me believable at all. The sincerity is not there."

So we are back to square one, with the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, calling for renewed public comment on greenhouse gases and climate change. We don't need any more public comments! We need decisive action -- by reducing our foreign and domestic dependency on oil and gas.

During his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush said, "In this decisive year, we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil." Guess what? Bush still can't kick the habit. And he doesn't want America to do so either.

Comments

[mgloraine]

It's very striking to compare G.W. Bush's call for urgent action with Al Gore's call for urgent action.

Bush is attempting to bully and threaten Congress into handing protected coastlines and wildlife reserves over to his pals in the oil industry so that they can continue to sell us environmental devastation at prices which will obliterate the remnants of our economy, and effectively keep our country dependent on dwindling carbon fuel resources.

Gore is challenging America to chart a new course which leaves fossil fuels behind, freeing us of dependency on oil & coal (both foreign AND domestic), developing clean and profitable technologies in the process which will generate new revenues and create new jobs, as well as re-establishing the USA as a leader in the global effort to save the planet from catastrophic climate change.

Hmmm, let's see, continue destroying the world, enriching oil tycoons and impoverishing everyone else, OR try different technologies, reinvigorating our own economy and saving humanity from extinction.

No contest.

[1will]

So we shouldn't drill for more oil today because that won't help us gain more oil production for several years?
Isn't that kind of like saying, "There's no point in spending money on AIDS cures and Cancer drugs today since we won't be able to pop those pills for another decade."
Many seem to constantly assume that if we aren't entirely self sufficient in oil production then there is no point in drilling for more oil. That is wrong. We were not self sufficient in the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's or today. It's been a long time since we've been self sufficient in anything whether it be cars, computers, clothing or oil. We need to produce enough oil to stabilize world prices and increase supply. A few million more barrels per day could help accomplish this.
It's interesting that the Democrats wish to sue OPEC into producing another million or two barrels per day yet the same amount of American supplied oil is useless to them.
Then there is national security. Unfortunately a 250 word limit cuts down on my ability to make that argument. Needless to say it's in our best interest to no rely so much on those oil producing nations that hate us.

[research]

it's not a cure. It's at most 3 years of oil. arriving some 7-14 years from now. The oil companies are already drill as much as they can or want to.

We should not waste any MORE money on a dead end.
end the Enron Loophole and oil will drop 50%.
Start dumping the oil Bush has been hording in the national reserve.

Transfer all overt and covert subsidies for nukes coal and oil to wind and solar.

Wind is faster then drilling, or nuke plants or coal plants and it's cheaper.
see my profile.

[mjt218]

It may be only three years of total US consumption, but the fact is that we would continue to receive consumption contributions from areas currently open to domestic production and imports. 10 years from now the price of oil will be higher if we don't open more areas up for drilling, because supply constraints will be at the margin, resulting in a supply shortage.

Solar, wind and nuke have squat to do with oil. Oil is primarily used as a transportation fuel. Even if you consider running electric cars, we don't need more electrical power generation capacity, we need cleaner electrical generation capacity.

[1will]

It's more than 3 years of oil and you have left out the huge reserves of natural gas.
So since we cannot be self sufficient we shouldn't drill at all? That makes no sense. If we have the ability to add oil to the total world marketplace we should do so. The price of oil rises and falls on a global level and a few million more barrels per day might not make us self sufficient but it would help control prices.
Look where we are today. Do you think we'll be better off 7-10 years from now or do you believe we'll still be using oil, relying on those that hate us and paying huge amounts for gas. Not drilling today because it would help us at a later date is rediculas. Not drilling for more oil because it is not enough to make us self sufficient is also crazy.
Dems seem to scoff at a million or two more barrels per day from American sources yet they call for Bush to release that same amount from the Strategic Oil Reserve and threaten to sue OPEC (that never stops being funny) into producing a million more barrels daily. Is it irony or hypocrisy?

[Vinca]

I think is a shame that we won't drill for oil in the contiental US, We have SO MUCH OIL, we would not have to deal with countries that harbor terrorists, I think we are THIRD in countries that have lots of oil

[research]

Ebon Bear and I both got it slight wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

The USA has 21B barrels total oil reserves

The USA uses 8B Barrels per year at a cost of 700B$ (21 Million barrels per day)
So the drilling everything gives us less then 3 years of oil sometime in the far future.

The world oil reserves are about 1TBbarrels
The world uses 31 Billion Barrels per year.
That's 30 years to complete the switch to solar and wind.

[EbonBear]

Actually, you're not even in the Top Ten. According to infoplease.com (the only source I could find), the top ten are: 1) Saudi Arabia, 2) Canada, 3) Iran, 4) Iraq, 5)Kuwait, 6) UAE, 7) Venezuala, 8) Russia, 9) Libya, 10) Nigeria.

The USA is number 11 with proven reserves of around 21.4 billion barrels. Even if all of that were extracted instantly, it would only fuel US demand for oil for slightly over a day since the USA uses 20.73 billion barrels a day (nationmaster.com). For comparison, Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of around 264.3 billion barrels.

Even that doesn't tell the full story because a lot depends on what KIND of oil we're talking about and the price. With oil at thirty bucks a barrel, it's only worth drilling for liquid crude in the US, Russia and the MidEast. If we're willing to pay $130 a barrel (and apparently, we are), then it's worth it to melt tar sands and squeeze the oil out of them and that makes Canada and Venezuala powerful because they have huge amounts of tar sand.

[research]

Why do you just keep repeating the same lie? There is at most a year or so of oil left in the entire USA, including offshore. Two: the oil companies have 60M acres they are not developing. three: no change in oil prices will occur from opening new drilling areas because the oil companies are already drilling as fast as they can or desire to do.

the USA uses 17B barrels of oil per year at about 700B$.
The total USA reserves are only 21B barrels.

That's just a little over 1 ears worth of oil use today, arriving at your pump in 7-14 years minimum.

For the cost of 2 years of oil purchase or the subsides to oil nukes and coal, we can convert completely to solar wind and ecars in less then 10 years
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research

[flatus]

The truly obscene underpinning of the Decider's desire to drill is that most American's will believe that , because the oil will come from American lands, it will be available for American use. Well, things have changed, folks. We are now a world market place so the oil will go to the highest bidder.

Making this an even more confusing issue is the spoken desire to drill in international waters. This supposedly due to the need to circumnavigate state legislatures. What will work mightily in their favor on this will be the concern that if we do not harvest this oil then some other nation will.

[jhNY]

"So it's hard to take much stock in whatever Bush has to say"--- in this sentence fragment lies the most succinct understanding of the man and the ideas he promotes. He's a liar by inclination if not nature, and his opinions and statements only confirm and elaborate his dishonesty. So yep, he's lyong about oil. That's just the kind of man he is.