RUSH: Bill in Burlington, North Carolina. Great to have you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, love the show, man. My question for you is with the strategic oil reserves being released, who gets that oil? How is it regulated? You know, are we, the taxpayers reimbursed in any way for the oil that’s given out, and does it stay in our country or does it go out to foreign countries?
RUSH: Yeah, those are good questions — and, you know, I used to have the answer to every one of those questions back when some administration was toying with the idea of doing this some years ago. I wanted to find out exactly the answer to your questions. The oil does stay in the United States but there are a lot of surprising things about it. Your questions are actually very good, and I’m just drawing a mental block on them, but I’m gonna find out. I’m gonna get the answer to your question before the program ends today because they’re very good questions. I just don’t want to take a stab at what I think I remember here and not get it right.
Who gets the oil? Who gets the credit for it? Who is paid for it? What kind of money changes hands? How is it regulated? Where does it go? This sort of thing, all those are valid questions. This whole thing, of course, is silly. We’re not talking about enough oil to affect supply and demand. We’re not talking about enough oil to affect price, and I think even the regime has admitted that. Well, we’re doing this for politics. We’re doing this to make it appear that we’re reacting to pressure OPEC. We’re doing this ’cause it’s an election coming up. It’s election season. We’re doing this to bash Big Oil. There are all kinds of opportunities for Democrats in releasing this, but in terms of having any actual impact on the supply that would affect price, it won’t have any.
In fact, it never would. There’s not enough oil in the strategic reserve, even if you released it — especially if you released it — all at once and on one day. We don’t have the capacity here to affect the price. What I find interesting about this is that the regime is admitting, or they at least they want us to believe that they believe more supply will cause a reduction in price. Yet, “Drill, baby, drill” is silly to them. “Oh, yeah, easy for you to say, Limbaugh! Drill, baby, drill! Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that, Mr. Limbaugh. It may sound simple to you. Just go up there and start digging some holes in the ground and here comes that Texas crude, but no! It’s a lot more complicated.”
Really? What’s complicated about it? We know where the oil is. We know what kind of oil is. There’s natural gas around oil, so you go out and you get ’em both. You help the domestic production. You reduce our dependence on foreign producers. All of it good! But we can’t do it because, “Drill, baby, drill!” is a mistake. It’s a pipe dream, they say. “We can’t get enough oil soon enough. If we start ‘Drill, baby, drill’ tomorrow, Mr. Limbaugh, we’re not gonna have enough oil to make a difference.” Yeah, you say that every year the idea comes up. Okay, so the idea came up 15 years ago, “Drill, baby, drill,” if we had acted on the idea 15 years ago, where would we be today? We would actually have some oil being drilled and pumped, and a daily supply of oil from new wells would no question have an impact on price. It’d lower the price, all because of supply. Anyway, I appreciate the call, Bill, thanks very much.
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