Stop Filling The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

This is the one which originally made me angry and precipitated the post below this one. John McCain, I said previously you were trying to piss on a house fire to try and put it out but NOW you really ARE trying to piss on a house fire to try and put it out. You want to what?? You want to:

Stop Filling The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) To Reduce Demand

Excuse me, to reduce WHAT? Demand? Oh I thought you said "to Reduce My Political Opponents". Because here is why this plan will never reduce demand: I checked in with my pals over at the DOE and they said that they were required to store the maximum legally authorized amount for the SPR - 1 billion barrels of oil. Incidently, the reserve already contains 700 million barrels of oil. So John McCain has sworn NOT to buy 300 MILLION barrels of oil! OPEC would be trembling, except that the world drinks 300 million barrels of oil every three and a half days. Shit.

The DOE even told me the cost per barrel of storage! What a bunch of sweethearts (it's 3.50 a barrel). They also were happy to give me the (current) price of 87 bucks ber barrel of crude for domestic oil 110 for imported. Since we eat 60% imported, that's about 101 bucks per barrel weighted average. So 300 million additional barrels costs 304 billion dollars. Wow, the McCain Save-O-Meter is way back in the positive:

304 billion less
6 billion
=298 billion

Oh yeah, almost forgot: The two biggest single drawdowns in the last 20 years from the so-called "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" were:
Desert Storm
Hurricane Katrina

These were ~20 million barrels for Desert Strom ~10 million barrels for Katrina. We have GWBush to thank for doubling the SPF's target to 1 billion.

John, how about you stop filling the SPF to reduce your favorite: unnecessary government spending? Goddammit, politians confuse the living fuck out of me.

cites:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/4dbd2cc7-890e-47f1-882f-b8fc4cfecc78.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_dfp1_k_m.htm
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wco_k_w.htm
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-facts.html