The Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East

CounterPnch
03 Febriary 2006


The Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East
Is Bush Serious?

By ROBERT BRYCE

During his State of the Union address, George W. Bush assured us
that, with his leadership, we are going to "make our dependence on
Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Bush's energy proposal has been slammed by both the right and the
left. The right says he's ignoring the free market. The left says
Bush isn't doing enough to increase vehicle fuel efficiency. But both
sides are ignoring the schizophrenia in Bush's pronouncement. Indeed,
when Bush bashes the Middle East oil producers, it's not clear which
countries he's talking about and more importantly, if he really wants
to quit buying their oil.

For instance, if the U.S. quit buying oil from the Middle East it
would be bad for Iraq. Real bad. You see, American energy companies
have been among the biggest buyers of Iraqi crude ever since the
start of the Second Iraq War. U.S. companies are now buying about
half of Iraq's daily crude output--about 500,000 barrels--and they're
shipping it to their refineries in America. In fact, among the bigger
buyers of Iraq's heavy sour crude is Exxon Mobil, which refines lots
of Iraqi crude at its massive Baytown refinery in Bush's home state.
In November alone, according to the Energy Information
Administration, that refinery turned some 5.6 million barrels of
Iraqi crude into about 200 million gallons of motor fuel that was
then used by American consumers.

And if the U.S. stops buying Iraq's crude, then that country's
fledgling government--which is barely clinging to life as it is --
wouldn't have the cash to pay for the reconstruction programs needed
to get its economy back up and running. Without reliable revenue, the
Iraqis will probably need more help from U.S. taxpayers to help with
the rebuilding. Is Bush going to ask Congress for more money to
rebuild Iraq just so we can end our dependence on Middle East oil? It
doesn't seem likely.

So, when Bush is talking about Middle Eastern oil, he can't be
talking about Iraq.

Well then, he must mean the other two Persian Gulf countries --
Kuwait (which sends about 270,000 barrels per day to the U.S.) and
Saudi Arabia (about 1.2 million barrels per day) -- who are also
among America's top 15 suppliers of imported oil.

But if that's the case, then the president wants to deny petrodollars
to the same royal regime that his father put back into power after
Saddam Hussein invaded their country in 1990. It was Bush 41, George
H.W. Bush, who regaled Americans about the need to restore the
"legitimate government of Kuwait." The elder Bush insisted that
getting the late Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah -- who was forced to
flee his palace,
along with his wives and 70 or so of his children--back atop the
Kuwaiti throne was a national imperative.

And if the younger Bush means to stop the flow of our energy dollars
to Kuwait, then he's forgetting America's strategic relationship with
that country. Without the Kuwaitis, the U.S. military would not have
a staging area for the thousands of G.I.'s going into and out of
Iraq. Without Kuwait, the U.S. would lose a key logistical base.
Hundreds of trucks per day carry supplies from Kuwait to American
soldiers in Iraq. Without the Kuwaitis' refineries, U.S. troops in
Mesopotamia would lose a reliable supplier of motor fuel. Without
motor fuel, American soldiers would be patrolling Baghdad and Tikrit
on foot.

So Bush can't be talking about Kuwait.

He must, then, be talking about Saudi Arabia. But if he is, then
perhaps he believes that U.S. energy companies should not have
purchased 548,000 barrels of gasoline from the Saudis last October.
That fuel helped ameliorate the shortage of motor fuel that hit the
southern U.S. in the wake of the two hurricanes, which forced several
refineries on the Gulf Coast to shut down.

Further, if Bush wants to stop using Saudi crude, then he's going to
have to get his buddy, Ray Hunt, to quit buying it. In October, EIA
data shows that Hunt bought 465,000 barrels of crude from the Saudis
for his refinery in Alabama. (And the refinery is his. Hunt Oil is
among the biggest privately held oil companies on earth). In
November, Hunt, a Dallasite who's one of the world's richest oil men,
bought another 462,000 barrels of Saudi crude.

Hunt has been a Bush crony for years. He was the Republican National
Committee's finance chair during Bush's 2000 campaign, and since 2001
he's been enjoying one of the perquisites of his presidential
friendship: Hunt sits on the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board the elite group that gets access to America's most-
secret secrets. (Hunt also happens to sit on the board of another
Bush-connected company, Halliburton. But that's a different story.)

Is George W. going to tell his pal, Hunt, that he can't buy crude oil
from the Saudis? And if Bush did mean that we won't buy oil from
Saudi Arabia, then why was he holding hands with King Abdullah last
April at his ranch in Crawford?

Thus, Bush couldn't have been talking about Saudi Arabia.

So it's a bit of a puzzle. In his State of the Union, Bush jumped on
the energy isolationists' bandwagon. Like them, he wants to cut
America's oil imports. But surely the president doesn't want to hurt
our allies in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Or does he?

Robert Bryce is the author of Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise
of Texas, America's Superstate.