” The Navy is planning to use the DPA to ensure that it has a reliable, cost-competitive supply of military fuels. DPA-invested production capacity will be, by contract, providing fuels at a cost-competitive price and with a dedicated supply to the military. The US Navy, like everyone else, is determined not to repeat the mistake of recent years and buying renewable fuels in the open market.
In this way, it is returning to the same strategy it used in the conversion from coal to petroleum back in the early 1900s.
The oil industry in Wyoming really got underway with the Teapot Dome complex, which was a Navy fuel production depot. Ultimately that complex was released to the public (initiating an energy brouhaha – the Teapot Dome scandal – that makes the upheaval over Solyndra look like chicken feed, and was described as the most serious public scandal prior to Watergate). President Harding’s Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, in fact went to jail as a result of the scandal, the first US cabinet official ever to do so.
The British Navy did much the same when converting from coal to oil. Concerned over supplies and costs, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill pushed through a plan to found the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to guarantee affordable, reliable sources of the new fuel. Today, that company is still around – it’s BP.”
