This is a letter that appeared in the Red Deer Advocate a week ago Friday. It was passed on to me by a good friend who doesn't have a computer and reads two or three newspapers a day. I thought the letter was well written and provoked some serious thought. Let me know what you think of it by supplying a comment at the end of this posting.

Because I couldn't figure out how to link to the letter at the Red Deer Advocate I've reproduced it here:

Letters - Red Deer Advocate - September 9, 2005

• "Recent news stories printed in the Advocate covered a variety of topics related to hurricane Katrina: the environmental devastation, the human suffering and the economic losses.
  
  However, I was still left with a lot of unanswered questions such as, why did President Bush take five days to decide "the results (of the emergency efforts) are not acceptable?"
  
  Thoughts of the days following the 9-11 disaster rang in my head.
  
  Within 24 hours other countries, including Canada, were calling to offer help, but the U.S. government held them at bay.
  
  The same unexplained attitude followed in the wake of Katrina.
  
  While people were dying horrible deaths and there was anarchy on the streets, the Bush administration's Condoleezza Rice told Pierre Pettigrew the U.S. would accept Canada's offer to help "as soon as needs were assessed."
  
  The second question that popped into my head involved a plea from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), which called upon its 26 member countries to release reserves for shipment as aide to the U.S.
  
  Why is sending oil more important than helping humans in distress?
  
  Canada's prime minister was forced to admit that Canada did not have a lot of reserve supply. However, Premier Ralph Klein, when asked, agreed to pull out the regulatory stops - possibly putting the lives of Albertans at risk - and send whatever could be squeezed into already "at capacity" pipelines.
  
  The IEA said 91,000 barrels per day (b/d) should be Canada's share but even by suspending limits put on individual shippers Neil McCrank, Alberta EUB chair, could only offer 18,000 to 30,000 extra barrels/day for direct shipment to the Gulf Coast.
  
  Canadians, always the great humanitarians, did not give our NAFTA agreement a second thought apparently, nor did anyone stop to ask why, when people were dying of thirst and rioting and lawlessness were still going on in the streets, was there was such an urgent need for oil supplies so quickly.
  
  Well, according to my research of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and other websites, the U.S. (unlike Canada) has a huge Strategic Petroleum Reserve which in August of 2005 amounted to 727 million barrels. This is stored in various locations across the country.
  
  Following hurricane Ivan in 2002, which damaged off-shore rigs and pipelines, the DOE released oil from this reserve to assist in reconstruction and transportation.
  
  A news release on the DOE website dated Sept. 3 said that the president had authorized the release for sale to refineries an initial 30 million barrels.
  
  Also, suppliers were told that "winter" gasoline supplies could be released immediately as could diesel fuel containing more than 500 ppm of sulfur and dyed (farm) diesel to ease the shortage of refined fuels in the area.
  
  Homeland Security waved the Jones Act restrictions on the transportation by ship of petroleum, gasoline and other refined petroleum products so ships could replace supplies normally carried by the now damaged pipelines.
  
  The really interesting revelation on the DOE website was from Sept. 1 - just a few days after Katrina hit land. The department is soliciting public comment on a proposal to expand the existing Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) from 700 million to one billion barrels. The public has until Oct. 21 to respond.
  
  So the president will release 30 million barrels from the SPR and the IEA will release an additional 60 million barrels into the US market and the proposed increased storage capacity for the SPR just happens to be an extra 30 million more than the capacity in August of 2005. Is that a coincidence, or what?
  
  At least some of these IEA-released products will be refined products. There really is no immediate crude oil shortage. The problem, as in Canada, is that the US has not built a new refinery in the past 25 years. So what will Bush do with the extra 30,000 b/d of crude from Alberta?
  
  That brings me to my next question which is: are Prime Minister Paul Martin and Klein really that ignorant of the implications, under our NAFTA agreement, of increasing the flow of oil to the U.S.?
  
  NAFTA rules say that whenever we increase our oil shipments to the U.S., that new volume then becomes the baseline volume which we must maintain - possibly even while we freeze to death in the dark in Alberta.
  
  Or, have both our provincial and federal governments already signed some secret deal with the U.S. and Big Oil and this natural disaster was just a wonderful excuse to hoodwink or Bush-whack the generous-to-a-fault Canadian public? One final burning question keeps rattling about in my brain.
  
  Why did it take so long to organize humanitarian aide to the poor, the elderly and the handicapped and such a short time to figure out how to make up the oil flow that was cut off when oil platforms and pipelines were damaged?
  
  That this president would Bush-whack Canadians out of our oil is one thing. That he would allow his own people to suffer needlessly: well, I don't want to think about that.
  
  Dorene Rew
  Red Deer

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'oil stained nugget' - careful with those ones.

Hasta La L8r Señor Oil dOOd Types!