Ok, here is the latest 'skinny' on the Bush Blan outlined yesterday, and completely overlooked here. This is a good critique of the plan and goes into depth that you will not find from the MSM.
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U.S.: Bush's Energy Proposals and the Politics Thereof
April 27 2005 22 30 GMT

Summary

The Bush administration is putting forward a series of proposals to address the country's "energy crisis." Stratfor examines the proposals to show what works and what does not, and why America's energy concerns are actually political in nature.

Analysis

While speaking at a conference of the Small Business Administration on April 27, U.S. President George W. Bush laid out a five-part plan for improving the U.S. energy situation.

Unlike the energy bill, which remains perennially stuck in Congress, Bush's proposals either do not need full Congressional approval or, when they do, are not nearly as controversial as things like drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That does not mean that the Bush proposals will be adopted, only that their chances of becoming policy are much better.

But like the energy bill, few of Bush's new policies promise to actually solve the problem of constrained energy supplies. Answers to those questions lie at home, in the political no-man's-land of energy conservation, and abroad, in foreign production levels. Both are largely beyond the government's ability to influence through policy, since such factors depend upon the preferences of American consumers or foreigners. For example, the Bush plan calls for increased international collaboration on energy-saving technologies and expanded tax credits for consumers who purchase fuel-efficient cars that sport hybrid, fuel-cell or diesel technologies. Such items are nice in that they promote energy conservation but, as envisioned, are only tiny steps that do little to effect solutions to the overriding problem of energy supply.

Ironically, from an economic standpoint, the American energy market is working roughly as it should. Despite high prices -- which result from a mix of factors, such as ravenous demand and minimal surplus production, seasoned by geopolitical risk -- there have been no disruptions in shipments, and the industry as a whole remains healthy.

But what the Bush administration is seeking is not so much an end to the ballyhooed energy "crisis" or to bring gasoline prices down from their current highs as it is the development of a more secure energy framework from which the country can operate as American foreign policy shifts gears.

To understand the Bush administration's "energy" policies, one must first realize that these new ideas do not stand alone: Washington is on the cusp of a new era, and its emerging energy policy is simply part of a new whole.

The jihadist war is winding down, and with a nascent indigenous government forming in Iraq, many U.S. soldiers will be returning home in the months to come. This is freeing up bandwidth for American foreign policy to deal with other matters, most notably broad geopolitical offensives against China and Russia.

But for the United States to deal effectively with those matters, it first must find as many ways as possible to insulate itself from international energy vicissitudes so that its foreign policy is as free from foreign entanglements as possible. It is not so much about reducing dependence on foreign energy as it is about maximizing freedom of movement. That is particularly the case since the United States cannot produce enough oil domestically to bridge its supply/demand gap with any energy policy. The United States already imports some 55 percent of its oil needs, and no amount of domestic production expansion, Alaskan or otherwise, will put a significant dent in that. Everything must be viewed through the lens of mitigation.

And that is precisely what the Bush administration is trying to accomplish. The new energy plan, which in reality is preparing for a more confrontational foreign policy, consists of three main components.

First, the Bush administration wants to empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to override state objections to the construction of facilities that import liquefied natural gas (LNG). Like oil production, natural gas production in the United States is on a slow downward spiral. Unlike oil, natural gas cannot be transported via tanker under normal conditions; it first must be supercooled into liquid form.

Also unlike oil, LNG is produced by countries such as Brunei, Trinidad and Tobago, Algeria, Egypt, Qatar, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria and soon Norway, which the United States finds friendlier to its foreign policy goals.

Once offloaded, LNG is heated and fed into the existing U.S. natural gas transport infrastructure, negating the need for the extensive infrastructure development common to most new energy sources.

Until now, LNG use in the United States has faced two obstacles. The first is its cost, but since natural gas prices in the United States have doubled in the past five years, this is no longer prohibitive. The second is state opposition to the facilities, largely on environmental grounds. Bush's proposal would allow the FERC to override such objections.

The second new policy proposal, establishing risk insurance to encourage the construction of new nuclear power plants, similarly seeks to plug a gap in the U.S. energy matrix. The United States has not built a new nuclear power plant since the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, mainly because of public opposition. In reaction, the government long ago adjusted the licensing process to encourage new construction, but no company wanted to be the first to jump on board, despite broad advances in nuclear technologies. The Bush proposal would allow interested parties to obtain risk insurance to cover any losses from delays due to the revised licensing process.

Now, this will not actually change any regulations or directly alter consumer mindsets. What it will do is result in more domestically produced electricity that does not draw upon foreign petroleum. Currently, only some 21 percent of U.S. electricity comes from nuclear power.

The third component -- a proposal to build oil refineries on former military sites -- would plug a different sort of gap. For one thing, new refineries would mean more fuel and competition and therefore lower prices, a big relief to U.S. consumers. But while the nuclear and LNG proposals seek to reduce oil use by substituting other fuel sources while securing long-term power supplies, new refineries would instead relocate a portion of the energy supply chain onto U.S. soil. No new refineries have commenced operations in the United States in 30 years. As a result, the United States now imports more than 20 percent of its total consumption of refined products and half of its gasoline.

The unavoidable U.S. dependence on oil imports means that it will always face policy constraints. Taken together, however, these three measures would go a long way to freeing the United States from trends -- and countries -- that could otherwise limit U.S. foreign policy options.

Ultimately, there are only two countries that might one day square the circle of limited oil production, which could bring prices down in the long term. The first is Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and possessor of the world's largest reserves. But the House of Saud has a vested interest in keeping global output as close to global demand as possible; the thinner the difference, the higher the price. Saudi Arabia will certainly increase its own output as the years roll by, but it has little interest anymore in seeking a cushion. That is something that Bush almost certainly took away from his April 26 meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, and in the end gave a tad more oomph to the April 27 mix of largely non-oil proposals.

The other possibility is Iraq, which boasts the world's second-largest proven reserves, despite the fact that three-quarters of its territory remains unexplored. Once Iraq gets an internationally accepted and domestically legitimate government, the only limitation on its production will be where it chooses to cap it. For a state that was locked off from the world for some 20 years and then involved in three wars, that cap is going to be high.