In an unprecedented manner, President Joe Biden decided to release massive amounts of oil from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) in 2022 which is a reserve used in times of emergency, rather Biden decided to artificially manipulate the oil prices to keep prices down, coincidentally during the time of election season.
According to Bloomberg News, it may take decades to replenish the supply of oil in the SPR after Biden released it on the open market. Currently, the Biden Administration is running into major hurdles impacting their efforts to refill the reserves such as an aging infrastructure, avoiding buying oil at too high of price, and simply the budget constraints the administration is under after spending billions recklessly for years.
The SPR holds major reserves of oil in underground salt caverns throughout the United States which sits half empty because of Biden’s ploy to deflate oil prices ahead of the mid term elections. Experts explained to Bloomberg News that it may take decades to refill the reserves. The former Department of Energy (DOE) SPR manager, John Shages, told Bloomberg News, “It would be a very slow process even if you had the money and the facilities were are all in good shape. It could take decades.”
In December of 2022, Biden authorized the release of 211 million barrels of oil after Russia invaded Ukraine. This unprecedented release was five times larger than any other in history leaving the SPR at extremely low reserve levels. Bloomberg reports that the administration would need to purchase over 300 million barrels to even return to 2009 levels. The reserve hasn’t been this low in 40 years and makes America vulnerable to price spikes going forward.
The research director at Height Capital, Benjamin Salisbury told Bloomberg “Do we really want to spend $7 billion or $8 billion to refill the SPR if we are still perfectly capable of producing our own oil?
The SPR currently has 346.8 million barrels on hand which must be saved for times of emergency. These reserves would only be able to supply America for 18 days in times of a crisis.