On March 31, President Biden announced he has authorized the largest release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in U.S. history: 180 million barrels over the next six months.
According to the White House, “the President will announce the largest release of oil reserves in history, putting one million additional barrels on the market per day on average – every day – for the next six months.”
This follows Biden’s first tapping of the SPR in November 2021, when he ordered 50 million barrels released.
In less than 15 months on the job, Biden has twice authorized SPR releases, totaling 230 million barrels, which accounts for roughly one third of the total SPR supply.
When Joe Biden entered the Oval Office in January 2021, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was basically filled to the brim, sitting at approximately 640 million barrels.
Today, nearly 15 months into the Biden administration, the SPR has been reduced to roughly 570 million barrels. However, based on Biden’s recent announcement, the SPR will be left with less than 400 million barrels by late summer.
The SPR was created in 1975, in response to OPEC’s oil embargo during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Since its inception, before Biden entered the Oval Office, SPR had been tapped into only three times (1991, 2005, and 2009).
Per the Department of Energy (DOE), “The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil was established primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program.”
So, what is driving the record drawdown of SPR? One thing and one thing only: record-high gas prices due to the Biden administration’s anti-energy policies.
In fact, Biden admitted as such in November, saying the 50-million-barrel influx was meant to “lower prices for Americans.”
For reference, the average price for a gallon of regular gas before Biden ordered the first SPR release was $3.39. Today, it has jumped to $4.25.
Suffice to say, Biden’s initial drawdown of the SPR did not meet his intended goal of lowering prices at the pump.
However, that was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has now become the White Houses’ main talking point in the blame game for rising prices at the pump.
As Biden recently stated, “Americans face rising prices at the pump because of Putin’s Price Hike. Since Putin accelerated his military build-up around Ukraine, gas prices have increased by nearly a dollar per gallon. Because of Putin’s war of choice, less oil is getting to market, and the reduction in supply is raising prices at the pump for Americans.”
Yet, that is only half of the story. What Biden failed to mention is that his policies are the primary driver of today’s sky-high gasoline prices.
Consider. Since taking office, Biden has canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 900,000 barrels of oil from Canada to U.S. refineries. Had Biden not put the kibosh on Keystone XL, his record-breaking and reckless draining of the SPR would have been unnecessary in the first place.
On top of the Keystone XL cancelation, Biden has also stopped all new leases for oil and gas production on federal lands, severely curtailing new drilling operations in some of the most oil-rich lands on the planet.
As if that were not enough, Biden has also increased regulations on oil and gas producers, put oil-rich ANWR off-limits, among several other anti-energy policies.
In other words, Biden has dramatically decreased U.S. production of oil and natural gas, which hit an all-time high of 13 million barrels per day under the Trump administration’s pro-energy agenda.
In fact, due to Biden’s war on fossil fuels, the United States is now producing about 11 million barrels of oil today versus the 13 million barrel-per-day average during the peak of production under Trump.
In other words, had Biden literally done nothing concerning oil and gas production, the United States would have no need to supplement the loss of Russian oil imports because our production capacity would have more than made up for the ban on Russian oil imports.
It is obvious that Biden is playing politics with the SPR, hoping to lower gas prices in the months before the mid-term elections. This is a dangerous development, not to mention a dereliction of duty.
The SPR does not exist as a tool for presidents to deplete when their policies backfire and prices at the pump skyrocket. Instead, the SPR was created solely as an emergency supply of oil in the case of major upheaval.
Alas, given that Biden’s anti-energy policies are responsible for the record-setting price of gasoline, it would make much more sense to ramp up production rather than further draining the SPR.
After all, the day will someday come when we actually need the SPR, but due to Biden’s short-term political shenanigans, we will likely less prepared to handle a true oil crisis.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.
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