We now know that the Bush Administration has managed to politicize non-political govt agencies from the EPA to the GSA, from the FDA to the Labor Dept. We know that Labor has consistently fudged unattractive numbers to make Bush look better, that the FDA and EPA have been ordered to change their conclusions and eliminate regulations they planned that were aimed at protecting consumers rather than the corpo's. We know that Lurita Doan allowed Rove's minions into her agency to tell her employees what to do to help Bush win election - which is illegal - and that Cheney has personally ordered changes in EPA's scientific conclusions about everything from endangered species to global warming.
With that as a long-term background (it's been going on consistently for Bush's entire reign), the timing and conclusions of this study are just too suspicious for words: when Bush is in the middle of using the price of gas as an excuse to do what he's been trying to do fo0r 7 years - open ANWR and both coasts to new oil drilling - and the day after mega-oilman Boone Pickens pokes BIG holes in his so-called "reasons", we've suddenly got the release of a US Geological Survey Study that makes some near-unbelievable claims about thopse oil reserves in Alaska.
The Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world’s yet to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves, the United States Geological Survey said Wednesday as it unveiled the largest-ever survey of petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle.
Oh yeah?
The reserves claimed in this study are enormous, way bigger than any non-oil corpo study has ever found that I know of. Which never stopped the corpo's from beating each other up trying to get their grubby little hands on them.
Oil companies have long suspected that the Arctic contained substantial energy resources, and have been spending billions recently to get their hands on tracts for exploration. As melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore, a race has begun among Arctic nations, including the United States, Russia, and Canada, for control of these resources.
If I was the paranoid type of sod everybody thinks I am, I might be tempted to believe that the oil corpo's deliberately engineered the warming of the globe to the point where the ice caps melt just so they could get at previously unreachable deposits. Lord knows, nothing as petty as conscience would prevent them from doing it if they could.
But this is about something far more mundane - the use of a governmental agency supposedly devoted to science as a propaganda tool to pimp for corporate interests. It would certainly not be the first time the Bush Admin used such agencies for such purposes, and the data in their conclusion, one has to say, is highly suspect. So has Bush once again corrupted yet another agency for crass politico-corporate goals? Can these numbers be trusted?
I don't think so. Look at them:
The assessment, which took four years, found that the Arctic may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This would amount to 13 percent of the world’s total undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.
At today’s consumption rate of 86 million barrels a day, the potential oil in the Arctic could meet global demand for almost three years. The Arctic’s potential natural gas resources are three times bigger. That equals Russia’s proven gas reserves, which is the world’s largest.
The agency called the Arctic region “the largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on earth.”
These are straight out of the oil companies' own glowing - and very optimistic - reports. Even the language in the last sentence sounds like it came from an oil company prospectus for potential investors.
This whole thing smells like old fish that's been laying out in the sun. The timing is way too perfect, the "conclusions" way too pat, and the numbers way too convenient for the Bush Push to Open Everything to Oil Drilling.
Personally, I'm going to need independent verification that the president hasn't just Bushified yet another govt agency.
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