The nastiest man in the Administration was interviewed by Nina Easton of Fortune recently. Here's one of the passages which stood out for me:
No, if there's anything about the economy that keeps Dick Cheney up at night, it's the prospect of sabotage aimed at disrupting the oil market, he told FORTUNE."Clearly the world depends on a global supply of oil, and that will continue to be true for some considerable period of time. Efforts to shut down the flow of oil could conceivably have a significant impact."
So when President Bush's 2008 budget was coming together, with the goal of balancing the budget in five years, Cheney nevertheless insisted on a $947 million line item: a speedup of the flow of crude into the Texas and Louisiana salt caverns housing the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The budget guys pushed back: Can't we wait until crude prices level off? No, the word came back from Cheney, this was urgent. That was all it took. "He doesn't weigh in on a ton of issues," said a person close to those negotiations. "But when he does . . ."
You and I may think it's really really stupid to be buying reserves when the price is pushing $100bbl, but that's why Cheney gets the big bucks.
Posted by Linkmeister at November 26, 2007 12:42 PM | TrackBack