Biden’s Raid on U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Leaves It at Lowest Level in 35 Years

Now that President Biden has attempted to palliate the American public during the gas price crisis by raiding the critical Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), it has reached the lowest level in 35 vears.

At the end of March, the Biden administration announced it would release one million barrels of oil per day from the reserve.

“The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time,” the White House bragged. “This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up.”

“The amount of crude oil in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) dropped by 5 million barrels in the week to May 13, data from the U.S. Department of Energy showed,” Reuters reported. “Stockpiles in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) fell to 538 million barrels, the lowest since 1987.”

Meanwhile the Biden administration gas been canceling oil and gas leases, including the potential to drill for oil in over one million acres in the Cook Inlet in Alaska.

American Petroleum Institute senior vice president Frank Macchiarola called the Alaska cancellation “another example of the administration’s lack of commitment to oil and gas development in the U.S.,” adding, “The President has spoken about the need for additional supplies in the market, but his administration has failed to take action to match that rhetoric.”

Regarding the depletion of the SPR, James Taylor, President of The Heartland Institute, snapped, “Joe Biden has dangerously sacrificed America’s long-term national security in exchange for a very slight, short-lived mitigation of his inflationary energy prices. Now, just a month later, gasoline prices are higher than ever, and our national energy security is in more danger than ever.”

“By draining the SPR and discouraging more oil production, Joe Biden is endangering our national security,” declared Steve Milloy, former Trump/Pence EPA Transition Team Member.

“His purpose is to advance his climate agenda, especially with respect to pointlessly expensive electric vehicles,” charged Gregory Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition. “It is imperative that voters return a new Congress that has the power and will to stop Biden’s climate agenda.”

The American Petroleum Institute has estimated that global crude oil cost is responsible for 61% cost of gasoline and that another 14% can be attributed to refining costs.

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