I posted this in this thread earlier,
maybe you should read it.
Here I'll paste it too:
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05-08-02 The US could draw up to 4 mm bpd of oil, equivalent of more than a third of its daily oil imports, from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the event of a Middle East oil crisis, Spencer Abraham, the US energy secretary, said. But he said the decision to fill the reserve from its present level of 580 mm barrels to its maximum capacity of 700 mm barrels had been taken to increase the country's energy security generally, and was not a contingency plan specifically related to any US attack on Iraq.
Speaking at London's International Petroleum Exchange, Mr Abraham said, in the Bush administration's view, SPR oil should be used to counter supply disruptions affecting national security rather than, as President Bill Clinton did, just to smooth price increases.
But he said the Bush administration was only filling the SPR "gradually" with royalty oil paid to the US government for Gulf of Mexico licences and it would take until 2005 for the maximum level to be reached. Nevertheless, Washington announced recently it was increasing the royalty oil being poured into the SPR's Louisiana salt domes from 60,000 to 100,000 bpd.
Mr Abraham said 4 mm bpd was the technical limit for withdrawals from the SPR.
The US imports around 9 mm bpd, of which the share from Iraq has sometimes been as high as 700,000 bpd. The energy secretary encouraged other countries to increase their oil stocks "just as a matter of overall energy security".
The Bush administration has long urged its SPR model on other countries, and its fellow European and Asian members of the International Energy Agency are already required to hold oil stocks equivalent to 90 days worth of consumption. Mr Abraham said he was asked by the Russian government for advice on setting up a Russian stockpile.
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Now the way that I read this is that on or about
May 8th of 2002 our Bush Administration Energy man - Mr. Abrahan,
is saying that that the U.S. was importing 9 million Barrels of Oil per Day, and of which we were getting
oil from Iraq -
which was sometimes as high as 700,000 Barrels per Day.
This was in a timeframe before the war, when the Embargo was in effect, and there was a UN 'Food for Oil Program.
We obtained Iraqi Oil outside of the UN program back then didn't we ?
After bombing the hell out of Iraq and disrupting their supply flow we don't get their oil sent here, it now goes to Asia.
So now we are filling up our Strategic Reserves at higher prices, with the U.S. taxpayer eating about $ 1 million dollars
in cost per day to do so, which further drives up the price of the oil and fuel to the end consumer. We are subsidizing
our own Government program to increase the price of gas to ourselves, for those companies that do business with the
select few business pardners that are interwoven with the Bush Administration's internal working personell.