Oil Wars: Caveats and Cronies

Robert Bryce, author of Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate, looks at the problems with Bush's "plan" for cutting US oil supplies from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Iraq.



Among the interesting side issues, Bryce takes a look at Bush cabal insider Ray Hunt:

In October, EIA data shows that Hunt bought 465,000 barrels of crude from the Saudis for his refinery in Alabama. (And the refinery is his. Hunt Oil is among the biggest privately held oil companies on earth). In November, Hunt, a Dallasite who's one of the world's richest oil men, bought another 462,000 barrels of Saudi crude.

Hunt has been a Bush crony for years. He was the Republican National Committee's finance chair during Bush's 2000 campaign, and since 2001 he's been enjoying one of the perquisites of his presidential friendship: Hunt sits on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board the elite group that gets access to America's most-secret secrets. (Hunt also happens to sit on the board of another Bush-connected company, Halliburton. But that's a different story.)