U.S. President Joe Biden announced he would authorize the sale of more oil from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve as his administration scrambles to rein in high gas prices before the midterm elections.
Speaking at the White House, Biden said the Energy Department would sell the remaining 15 million barrels of the 180 million barrels that were authorized for sale in March - a move that he argued would help drive down the price of gas and give families a bit of “breathing room.”
Biden said the administration will adopt a “ready and release plan” that would allow it to “move quickly” to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the future “to prevent oil price hikes and respond to international events.”
The U.S. president acknowledged that the reserve's resources have been drained and said his administration would buy crude to refill it once prices fall to $70 a barrel.
Biden, who has pushed oil companies to ramp up oil production for months, said his announcement to refill the reserve should reassure the oil industry that it “can invest to ramp up production now with confidence that they will be able to sell their oil to us.”
The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day, and many analysts say the sale of 15 million more barrels from the oil reserve is unlikely to have much effect on gas prices.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was established as a national energy safety net after the oil crisis of the 1970s, is at its lowest level since 1984.
