China Emerging as U.S. Rival for Canada's Oil

nytimes.com ^ | December 23, 2004 | SIMON ROMERO

[Destro]

Never graduated high school? When the Congress authorizes "purchase" for the strategic reserves the oil sits in storage tanks destined for emergencies to be used by the military, and other govt organizations AND IS NOT stored for the ordinary citizen.

Now if the Strategic reserves are to be used they would have to be SOLD to the American public.

See? We PURCHASE the oil and then we SELL it. Go read a comic book or something.

[finnigan2]

" Now if the Strategic reserves are used they would have to be SOLD to the American public."

- Wrong again, banana breath. If the strategic reserves are used, they are set aside for a national emergency, such as a war. In that case, they would NOT be SOLD to the American public, they would be used by the military.
The only time that the strategic reserves were "sold" to the public that I can recall was when Slick Willie misused his authority by releasing hundreds of thousands of barrels from the strategic reserves to the public when the cost of gas spiked and he thought the release would get him some popular brownie points. I remember at the time that his actions took about .02 cents off the price of a gallon of gas for a few weeks.
As with all of Clinton's action's, the effects were negligible and short term.

[Destro]

Again your point is stupid. What good will a few weeks of oil do to the American economy? Once again teh USA does not buy much oil on a federal govt level - sales are to individuals. Chinese buy more for institutions since few Chinese have cars and oil heated homes - though that changes upwards everyday.

[marron]

Actually Bush authorized the sale of some small amount of oil at the end of the hurricane season, to compensate for deliveries hung up by the series of storms that had oil tankers stacked up out to sea.

I don't know if it really made much difference, though.