Read Online December Ultimatum by Michael Nicholson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Nicholson
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President looked at the man at the end of the table. ‘Johns?’ It sounded like a summons.
The Director stood up from his chair and pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles further up the bridge of his long thin nose. He was slim and frail, looking almost as grey as his worsted flannel suit, more like a failing academic than the nation’s Intelligence chief.
‘Mr President, I agree totally,’ he said in his clipped Princeton accent, reminding the President of familiar Boston tea-parties. ‘If you want Saudi oil, you will certainly have to use American troops to get it. But you will have to use King Fahd to keep it. The Generals here, sir, tell us we can survive, despite the location and line of re-supply. But like Sorenson, I believe we cannot survive international reaction, or the protests here at home, and there’ll be plenty, unless we put the King back in his palace. You may get those oil supplies moving again, sir, but without Fahd you’ll not survive your presidency.’
Richard Johns sat down again and looked around the table for some endorsement, but there was none. The generals were looking at their President, their Commander-in-Chief. Very slowly, he did up the button of his shirt collar and straightened his black tie. Then he stood up and went behind this chair, his hands on the back of it, facing them. He coughed to clear his throat and, when he spoke, every one of them, there in the Situation Room, knew that the anxiety had left him. His voice was menacing. Advice had been given, strategies tossed around, and he had made up his mind. For good or for bad, country right or wrong, he had decided what he now thought best for America.
‘Gentlemen. An hour ago I was briefed by Professor Nicholas Grüber of the Petroleum Institute on the simple facts of oil, not that I needed reminding, God help me! Grüber’s conclusion, after forty minutes, was stark and simple. The United States of America needs that oil like a bleeding man needs plasma. Every fibre of our daily life depends on what Grüber calls hydrocarbons and we call oil, and which, by the saddest accident in God’s world has lodged itself under the Arabs. Four million barrels a day we use of it, four million barrels, three hundred and sixty-Five days a year. Our oil import bill is topping five million dollars an hour—d’you get that—every hour, that’s over eighty thousand dollars a minute. Add to that the tankers, the truckers, the refineries, the marketing. And we reckon this is a crisis? By God, we haven’t even started yet. At the moment we are only importing sixty per cent of our oil needs, but in eight years’ time—let me repeat, eight years—all of our own oil will be used up. There will not, not , be a drop of claimable American oil left in the ground outside of Alaska. Who says so? The US Department of Energy says so. The American Petroleum Institute says so. Data Resources Incorporated says so. You want more? Because there’s plenty who say so—here, in Europe, in Asia. And their figures tally. Conclusion? In eight years most—not all, but most—of the oil we want will be owned by the Arabs. Most of us will drive by courtesy of the Arabs. Most of the wheels that turn in this country will turn by courtesy of Arab oil. And by Christ! Do they know it!
‘Ten years ago it was costing us three dollars a barrel and selling at the gas stations at eighteen cents a gallon. You all know what it is today. A twenty-five per cent increase in the past eleven months and the next OPEC meeting will push it even higher because they know, every single one of them, that we can’t live without it. They’re oil pushers feeding an addiction, feeding us addicts who demand more and more of it every day, whatever the price, whatever the conditions, whatever the humiliation!’
He paused and drank from the vacuum flask of iced water on the table. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and the six men watching saw sweat on their President’s
The Director stood up from his chair and pushed his gold-rimmed spectacles further up the bridge of his long thin nose. He was slim and frail, looking almost as grey as his worsted flannel suit, more like a failing academic than the nation’s Intelligence chief.
‘Mr President, I agree totally,’ he said in his clipped Princeton accent, reminding the President of familiar Boston tea-parties. ‘If you want Saudi oil, you will certainly have to use American troops to get it. But you will have to use King Fahd to keep it. The Generals here, sir, tell us we can survive, despite the location and line of re-supply. But like Sorenson, I believe we cannot survive international reaction, or the protests here at home, and there’ll be plenty, unless we put the King back in his palace. You may get those oil supplies moving again, sir, but without Fahd you’ll not survive your presidency.’
Richard Johns sat down again and looked around the table for some endorsement, but there was none. The generals were looking at their President, their Commander-in-Chief. Very slowly, he did up the button of his shirt collar and straightened his black tie. Then he stood up and went behind this chair, his hands on the back of it, facing them. He coughed to clear his throat and, when he spoke, every one of them, there in the Situation Room, knew that the anxiety had left him. His voice was menacing. Advice had been given, strategies tossed around, and he had made up his mind. For good or for bad, country right or wrong, he had decided what he now thought best for America.
‘Gentlemen. An hour ago I was briefed by Professor Nicholas Grüber of the Petroleum Institute on the simple facts of oil, not that I needed reminding, God help me! Grüber’s conclusion, after forty minutes, was stark and simple. The United States of America needs that oil like a bleeding man needs plasma. Every fibre of our daily life depends on what Grüber calls hydrocarbons and we call oil, and which, by the saddest accident in God’s world has lodged itself under the Arabs. Four million barrels a day we use of it, four million barrels, three hundred and sixty-Five days a year. Our oil import bill is topping five million dollars an hour—d’you get that—every hour, that’s over eighty thousand dollars a minute. Add to that the tankers, the truckers, the refineries, the marketing. And we reckon this is a crisis? By God, we haven’t even started yet. At the moment we are only importing sixty per cent of our oil needs, but in eight years’ time—let me repeat, eight years—all of our own oil will be used up. There will not, not , be a drop of claimable American oil left in the ground outside of Alaska. Who says so? The US Department of Energy says so. The American Petroleum Institute says so. Data Resources Incorporated says so. You want more? Because there’s plenty who say so—here, in Europe, in Asia. And their figures tally. Conclusion? In eight years most—not all, but most—of the oil we want will be owned by the Arabs. Most of us will drive by courtesy of the Arabs. Most of the wheels that turn in this country will turn by courtesy of Arab oil. And by Christ! Do they know it!
‘Ten years ago it was costing us three dollars a barrel and selling at the gas stations at eighteen cents a gallon. You all know what it is today. A twenty-five per cent increase in the past eleven months and the next OPEC meeting will push it even higher because they know, every single one of them, that we can’t live without it. They’re oil pushers feeding an addiction, feeding us addicts who demand more and more of it every day, whatever the price, whatever the conditions, whatever the humiliation!’
He paused and drank from the vacuum flask of iced water on the table. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and the six men watching saw sweat on their President’s
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