President Biden’s Dangerous Abuse Of The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The most striking aspect of President Joe Biden’s press engagement Wednesday related to his announced release of another 15 million barrels of oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was the question that was not asked by any of the reporters in the room. In his statement, Biden scolded U. S.

oil companies, saying “My message to the American energy companies is this: You should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends. Not now. Not while a war is raging,” Biden said.

“You should be using these record-breaking profits to increase production and refining. ” This statement raises several key questions, but the most obvious is this: If “a war is raging,” why, then, does the President of the United States remain so steadfastly focused on depleting the volumes of crude oil contained in the SPR? Unfortunately, no one in the room thought to ask this crucial question. When Biden assumed office, the U.

S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that the SPR contained more than 638,000 barrels of oil. After 11 months of Biden’s various withdrawal programs, the volume at the end of July sat at about 468,000 barrels.

Today, it’s just over 400,000, and will go lower in the weeks to come. While America is involved in what can be considered a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, the country is fortunate not to be currently involved in what can reasonably be defined as a true national emergency. While an $86/barrel price for West Texas Intermediate and a $3.

83 national average price for gasoline are inconvenient for politicians and certainly hit most everyone in the pocketbook, calling them a national emergency, as Biden does, is frankly ridiculous. Adjusted for inflation, $86 oil pales in comparison to the $90-$100 crude prices seen from 2011-14, and even to the $40 crude prices experienced in the early 1980s. As the Wall Street Journal points out in an op/ed this morning, Barack Obama, while president from 2011-14, only chose to tap the SPR one time, and that was a limited, 30.

6 million barrel withdrawal after the major disruption in oil flows from Libya in 2011. Biden, as vice president, obviously failed to learn from his boss’s admirable restraint, and has now taken more than 200 million barrels out of the SPR in less than a year’s time for apparent political reasons. This is dangerous.

What if a real national emergency did arise in the days or weeks to come? The President boasted during his press appearance yesterday of the fact that the SPR still contains 400 million barrels, which he claims is “more than enough” to deal with any foreseeable emergency. But is it really? According to Biden’s own EIA, U. S.

daily oil usage for September was right at 20 million barrels per day. That means that the SPR right now contains just 20 days of domestic supplies. EIA says the U.

S. imported about 9 million barrels of crude each day in July, meaning Biden has now depleted the SPR down to just 44 days of average import needs. Oil companies in the U.

S. are making big profits right now – that is certainly true. And U.

S. producers could do more to increase their production levels as Biden says. There are various reasons why they haven’t been doing that, many of which have to do with Biden’s own policies.

But none of what Biden said Wednesday really justifies this political abuse of the SPR by a president who repeatedly claims America is on a wartime footing and warns his big donors about a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia. Yesterday’s press conference was just another pre-election political stunt, plain and simple. The shame of it is that no one thought to ask the most obvious question about it all.

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