Apparently we really do not know how much oil is located off our coasts. A lot of the current surveys were done over 20 years ago. Techniques for finding oil have vastly improved since then. We could be the next Saudi Arabia or the next Russia for all we know. Currently the US banking industry is bordering on insolvency. The US Federal Government is bordering on insolvency. What happened to Russia in 1999 when it defaulted, could happen here. We need to put our resources in play. Look what it did for Russia fiscally in just 9 years.
Citgo is owned by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company controlled by Chavez. Any reasonable observer would have to conclude that the “JOE-4-OIL” advertisements and discounted heating oil program are very political.
In one ad, Kennedy accuses the U.S. government of cutting the federal budget for heating oil assistance while a picture of the White House floats in the background. The placement of the ads also appears politically motivated. How else to explain, for example, why the ads are running on “Meet the Press With Tim Russert” and “FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace,” shows for savvy political insiders that presumably have few viewers that qualify for heating oil assistance?
The “JOE-4-OIL” ads skip over the prominent role Chavez has played to intimidate OPEC to reduce oil production to raise prices, an act that hurts the poor first and foremost.
The poor in the United States are well-off by Venezuelan standards. Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation noted in a recent report that “97 percent of poor [U.S.] households have a color television.”
Boston Herald stated that “entities related to his Citizens Energy Corp. paid him [Joe Kennedy] more than $400,000 in 2003, the last year for which records are available.” Not bad for a non-profit executive willing to lend his name to a $9 million foreign disinformation campaign.