Biden to release 10M more barrels from Strategic
Overview
President Biden on Wednesday said he would release 10 million more barrels of oil from the U.S.’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in November in a move to counter raising gas prices again.
His decision was announced just hours after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) said it would cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day.
The cuts will restore the oil market for top producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia but are also expected to drive up costs at the pump globally.
Lawmakers Criticize Us Reliance On Foreign Oil As OPEC+ Slashes Production
In March, Biden released 10M more barrels from Strategic a day to counter record high gas prices amid a global economic recession, inflation, and disruption to the market caused by the war in Ukraine.
The release of roughly 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. petroleum reserves was expected to end on Oct. 31.
How many barrels does the US strategic oil reserve have?
714 million barrels
The federally-owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns at four sites along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. The sheer size of the SPR (authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels) makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy
Where is oil in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve stored?
Emergency crude oil is stored at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in underground salt caverns at four major oil storage facilities in the Gulf Coast region of the United States, two sites in Texas (Bryan Mound and Big Hill), and two sites in Louisiana (West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw).
The Oil Shale Resource Base?
The present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day, so 800 billion barrels would last for more than 400 years if oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand.
How much oil did Biden SPR release?
one million barrels per day
Meanwhile, President Biden continued to deplete the SPR. In March, he announced the release of one million barrels per day through September, the largest release in the reserve’s history.
Can the US survive on its own oil?
The U.S does indeed produce enough oil to meet its own needs. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2020 America produced 18.4 million barrels of oil per day and consumed 18.12 million. And yet that same report reveals that the U.S. imported 7.86 million barrels of oil per day last year
Can the US produce more oil?
The oil industry can decide to produce more oil whenever it wants. In fact, the oil industry already possesses more than 9,000 approved—but unused—drilling permits on federal lands. Nearly 5,000 of those permits were approved in 2021 alone—the highest figure since the second Bush administration
