WASHINGTON, D.C. – IER President Thomas Pyle sent a letter today to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus criticizing the use of experimental biofuels by a carrier strike group in the Pacific ocean. Pyle also informed Mabus of his request for Congress to initiate an “immediate, exhaustive, and unyielding” investigation of the abuse of taxpayer dollars represented by the Navy’s biofuel experiment, called “The Great Green Fleet” by defense department officials
“The Navy Department’s claim that the U.S. possesses only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves is a vast understatement of our real domestic energy potential at best, and an intentional distortion at worst. A recent report from the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that the U.S. possesses at least 26 percent of the world’s oil supply, leading top policymakers to call the President’s claims “less than honest,”” Pyle wrote.
“The continued use of a specious claim about America’s true resource potential by the U.S. Navy is troubling. The American people would not support your decision to purchase $27 per gallon biofuels at ten times the going rate for fuel if they knew that decision rests on faulty rhetoric and propaganda. And they deserve to know, since their taxpayers’ dollars are funding your green experiment that is taking money away from critical functions of the Navy.
“The United States is the most energy rich country on earth, and our Navy is its most advanced sea power force. The uniformed men and women who serve the U.S. Navy – and the people they serve to protect – deserve better than half-truths and outright distortions of fact to facilitate a green energy agenda that has nothing to do with our national security. Using our limited national defense dollars on agendas that are premised on faulty data is scandalous. I urge you to consider the facts, direct the Navy to cease publication of specious claims about American energy resources, and return to pursuing the Department’s core mission.”
To read the full letter from Thomas Pyle to Navy Secretary Mabus, click here.
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