Earlier this year, Townhall reported on the Biden administration's decision to siphon off millions of barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a political effort to help Democrats in the midterms after Biden and his forced energy "transition" saw strict limits placed on U.S. oil production and the cancelation of infrastructure projects to support oil and gas development.
Back in July, the SPR held 346,758,000 barrels of oil in its underground tanks located in Texas and Louisiana that have the capacity to hold 714,000,000 barrels, according to the Department of Energy. That is, America's emergency backup supply of oil was drained to being more than half empty by Biden in response to an "emergency" that his energy agenda had created.
And even though Townhall has been reporting on Biden's self-inflicted energy crisis and his drastic response to artificially apply pressure to keep prices lower after the national average for a gallon of gas hit its all-time high in the summer of 2022, it appears some in the mainstream media are starting to see the problem with Biden's use of the SPR.
"An energy crisis spawned by a Middle East war 50 years ago spurred the U.S. to create a huge crude oil stockpile to shield the country from threats by unfriendly nations," reminded Politico in a story on the SPR published Monday. "Now the oil lying in half-filled salt caverns along the Gulf Coast is posing a political quandary for President Joe Biden."
Now, apparently, there's concern that "the reserves’ diminished volumes limit Biden’s options to respond to a future shock to the oil markets, including those that could result from a widening of the war in the Middle East," Politico noted.
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...having a full reserve would have given the White House a freer hand to enforce sanctions blocking Iran’s oil exports, said Bob Ryan, analyst at BCA Research.
The relatively low levels in the SPR “leaves the U.S. in a position of relying on Saudi Arabia and others with spare capacity to ramp supply in the event of a cutoff” of Iranian oil, Ryan said in an email.
The administration has insisted it’s continuing to enforce the economic sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed on Iran in 2018. But analysts monitoring oil shipments say Iranian exports have risen sharply on Biden’s watch.
It doesn't help that Biden has already been shown to have a weak hand when it comes to requesting increases in the amount of oil from OPEC+, being embarrassed more than once when his begging was rejected by the oil-rich collective of countries. Instead of pumping more oil into the economy, as Biden has requested, OPEC+ has rejected America's requests and even cut production in an added blow to Biden's strategy.
With a less than half-full SPR, as Politico's source explained, Biden has fewer options to hold our country's foes accountable for violating such embargoes. It's another point of weakness for the Biden administration and one that could be fixed by ramping up U.S. energy production and green-lighting the development projects he killed off. The U.S. doesn't need to rely on other countries — and didn't when Biden took office — to increase the supply of oil and gas flowing around the world.
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