With President Obama delaying the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would facilitate access to the estimated 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in North America, the United States Navy is reportedly slated to spend $12 million at a rate of $15 per gallon on a biofuel-gasoline blend — a purchase justified by the proposition that dependence on oil is a national security threat.
“We are doing this for one simple reason: It makes us better fighters,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said, according to a National Journal report last week. “Our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security and to the U.S. Navy ability to protect America and project power overseas.”
The Institute for Energy Research (IER), an organization that “maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges,” argues that Mabus’ justification doesn’t hold water.
“[Mabus’] statement is based on the myth that the United States and North America as a whole has very limited oil resources,” IER says. “The reality is that North America, and the United States in particular, is awash in fossil fuels,” claiming that the US has access to 1.4 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, a number that kicks up to 1.7 trillion when combined with recoverable oil in Mexico and Canada.
While Mabus spends millions to avert “a very real threat to national security,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., tweeted Friday that the Republicans who continue to push for the Keystone XL oil pipeline between the US and Canada are “wasting valuable time b/c it will not pass the Senate.”
“You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy,” observes Hot Air’s J.E. Dyer. “Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.”
