Big Oil Slick

With the fall elections only a month away and the crazies facing the possibility of losing both the House and Senate, the administration received an early Christmas present from their buddies over at Chevron. A spokesman for the giant oil company claims that it successfully extracted oil from a test well in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. CNN dutifully framed the discovery as “an achievement that could be the biggest breakthrough in domestic oil supplies since the opening of the Alaskan pipeline.” Are we still looking to break our addiction to oil before the election? Someone better hurry off to an OA meeting because I think we're about to have a relapse. By the way, prior to becoming a Sith Lord, Condaleeza Rice spent a decade on the Board of the Chevron Corporation, and apparently was so well thought of that she earned the honor of having one of its supertankers named "Condoleezza". (See picture; btw, the double-hulled, Bahamian-registered oil tanker carrying the moniker of Bush's national security adviser was eventually renamed the Altair Voyager in 2001 after the media had the temerity to question its appropriateness). I’m sure there is no connection between the timing of this discovery and the dear Madam Secretary. Surely the announcement of this discovery wasn’t timed to counter all of those “Voters are very angry with the incumbants” headlines that have been popping up in the papers the last few days.

Rice’s presence on the board isn’t the only connection between the administration and the lucky oil giant. After reviewing roughly 1,500 documents obtained from the Energy Department related to Vice President Cheney's energy task force back in May of 2002, the Natural Resources Defense Council uncovered evidence showing the Bush administration implemented several energy policies requested by Chevron Corporation in its unofficial "advisory" capacity to the President's energy committee. The company provided several recommendations, ranging from easing federal permitting rules for energy projects to relaxing standards fuel supply requirements, which ultimately were included in the president's national energy plan. In a February 5, 2002, letter to President George Bush and copied to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Chevron CEO David J. O'Reilly recommended four short-term actions the administration should take to "eliminate federal barriers to increased energy supplies."

Another Chevron Corporation giant in the Bush administration is Vice President Dick Cheney former Chairman and CEO of everyone’s favorite corporate bogeyman Halliburton Corporation, the world’s largest oil field services company with multi-billion dollar contracts with oil corporations including Chevron. Halliburton's global network of investments includes projects in politically volatile areas including the Caspian Sea region. Dick Cheney was instrumental in negotiating the construction of a Caspian Sea pipeline for Chevron.

Wall Street Oil analysts also took the opportunity presented by the discovery to wag their collective fingers at the consumers who dared to question the oil compamies record profits at a time when people were struggling to fill their gas tanks; Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst for Oppenheimer made the argument that it is only with oil at its current historically high prices that exploration depth really became economically practical.

"This is the silver lining of higher oil prices," he said. "If we didn't have higher oil prices, they wouldn't have dared to risk this much capital here." Yes, every grey cloud of smog has silver lining the pockets of the oil executives.

Anyway, it looks like more lies and deception from your friends in Washington and Texas. My prediction is that in the next couple of days Bush will start talking about this “discovery” at press conferences and questions about the timing of the announcement will be ignored by the mainstream media even as the discovery of an enormous amount of unknown oil is revealed as a fake. We’ll see…