The Biden administration has announced plans to sell an additional 20 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)—the fifth sale the administration has held since Biden took office.
In what a White House press release calls a “historic release,” 125 million barrels of oil have already been sold from the SPR, 70 million barrels of which have already been delivered to various buyers.
The Biden Administration says the releases are intended to reduce the price of gasoline at the pump for consumers, by increasing the available supply of oil. A report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury calculates that these releases have kept gas prices up to 40 cents per gallon below what they would otherwise have been.
‘Unprecedented Size and Scope’
A White House press release from July 26th says these measures are ambitious and are having a positive immediate impact on oil prices.
“With these releases, the President has executed a drawdown of unprecedented size and scope to respond to the energy market disruptions posed by Russia’s invasion, and his actions are having an impact,” the White House press release said.
The Biden administration has repeatedly blamed high gas prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine; however, fuel prices haven risen steeply since Biden took office, rising by more than a dollar before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Band-Aid Solution
The Biden administration’s recognition that having more oil on the market helps reduce prices is a positive development, but their solution is a political quick fix, not a long-term beneficial policy change, says Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER).
“It’s great to see the White House admitting that more oil on the market leads to lower prices at the pump,” Pyle said. “The problem with the White House’s plan is that they only want a temporary decrease, which is why they are releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve instead of a more permanent solution to increased domestic production.
“From 2008 through last year, U.S. oil production increased from 5 million barrels a day to over 11.2 million barrels a day, a 125 percent increase,” Pyle said. “Using the White House’s math means that prices at the pump were about $2 a gallon cheaper than they would have been without the increase in domestic oil production.”
In the long run, it is American domestic oil production that keeps gas prices stable and low, Pyle says, and the Biden administration should acknowledge and act on this fact.
“Domestic oil production is the biggest factor in reducing retail prices, and if President Biden really wants sustainably lower prices at the pump, he would work to increase domestic oil production instead of trying to choke off domestic supply as he has been doing,” Pyle said.
‘No Positive Intention’
The Biden administration deserves scorn, not praise, because Biden’s actions since taking office intentionally created the current crisis as part of its “all of government” approach to reducing fossil fuel use, says Jay Lehr, Ph.D., senior policy advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition.
“Taking oil from the SPR as well as every other act they perform has no positive intention,” Lehr said. “It is part of the Great Reset that has been underway for 15 years to enslave the world’s population to the evil puppet masters of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.
“But the tide will begin to turn when on November 8 the U.S. House of Representatives will throw out the leadership of the Communist/Democratic party,” Lehr said.
Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.
For more on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, click here and here.
For more on gas prices, click here.