As expected, the Biden administration announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Tuesday.
The SPR “swap” will be coordinated with China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
“As we come out of an unprecedented global economic shutdown, oil supply has not kept up with demand, forcing working families and businesses to pay the price,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “This action underscores the president’s commitment to using the tools available to bring down costs for working families and to continue our economic recovery.”
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The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is meant to be an emergency stockpile to access to oil in case of national security issues, natural disasters and other unforeseen events, not for ease of predictable inflation caused by the Biden administration’s disastrous economic and “green” policies.
The announcement has incensed Former President Donald Trump who absolutely ripped Biden in a statement Tuesday.
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“For decades our Country’s very important Strategic Oil Reserves were low or virtually empty in that no President wanted to pay the price of filling them up. I filled them up three years ago, right to the top, when oil prices were very low,” Trump said.
In fact, under President Trump’s wildly successful energy policies, the United States not only filled its coffers but for the first time became the leading exporter of oil.
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According to Forbes, just three short years ago, the United States led “the world in the production of petroleum products, including crude oil, petroleum liquids and biofuels with 17.9 million barrels per day, or 18% of the petroleum market. This month, the U.S. was ahead of Saudi Arabia, which reached 12.4 million barrels per day or 12% of the world’s total output, and Russia with 11.4 million barrels per day or 11% of the global market.”
Imagine Trump’s disdain as he witnesses not only the end to US dominance in the oil industry but to actually be dipping into the reserves.
“Those reserves are meant to be used for serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else,” Trump said.
“Now I understand that Joe Biden will be announcing an “attack” on the newly brimming Strategic Oil Reserves so that he could get the close to record-setting high oil prices artificially lowered,” he said. “We were energy independent one year ago, now we are at the mercy of OPEC, gasoline is selling for $7 in parts of California, going up all over the Country, and they are taking oil from our Strategic Reserves.”
He slammed Biden with his final comment, “Is this any way to run a Country?”
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The truth is the release of of 50 million barrels will do very little to offset demand and drive prices down.
The Energy Department maintains the reserves which are stored in caverns within in salt domes along the Gulf Coasts of Texas and Louisiana. There are about 605 million barrels petroleum in the reserve.
As Newsmax reports, “Americans used an average of 20.7 million barrels a day during September, according to the Energy Information Administration. That means that the release nearly equals about two-and-a-half days of additional supply.”
While there are factors in the markets directly resulting from the pandemic, Biden has done nothing to help the US oil industry to recover and keep up with demand. Instead he has slowed oil drilling, and killed infrastructure including the Keystone pipeline. He also has his eyes set on shutting down the L-5 pipeline in Michigan.
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Trump is not the only one upset by this decision.
“President Biden’s policies are hiking inflation and energy prices for the American people. Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will not fix the problem,” said Sen. John Barrasso, (R-WY). “We are experiencing higher prices because the administration and Democrats in Congress are waging a war on American energy.”
Sadly, Biden is using a very small band-aid to fix a bleed-out hemorrhage. It is more smoke and mirrors rather than owning and addressing the real issues that are hurting the American tax payers.
Let’s go Brandon!