President Joe Biden ordered the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to release an average of 1 million barrels of oil a day in a last-ditch effort to curb gas prices. Also on Thursday, a Bloomberg reporter pointed out that former President Donald Trump tried to bolster the reserve back in 2020.
“It’s true that Trump proposed filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when prices were cheap and Schumer bragged about stopping him,” reporter Steven Dennis tweeted.
It's true that Trump proposed filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when prices were cheap and Schumer bragged about stopping him.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 31, 2022
Trump attempted to have the Department of Energy purchase 77 million barrels of crude oil in March 2020, which would have brought the reserve to its maximum capacity.
“DOE is moving quickly to support U.S. oil producers facing potentially catastrophic losses from the impacts of COVID-19 and the intentional disruption to world oil markets by foreign actors,” then Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the time.
ABC 16 Scranton then noted that Congressional Democrats blocked what they called a “$3 billion bailout for big oil” in an early coronavirus emergency package, according to a press release from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D- N.Y.).
While Trump did inaccurately claim that the reserves were filled under his presidency in a statement Thursday, he still gets the last laugh in this scenario. It would have been a smart move to fill the reserves when it was more cost-efficient, but the Democrats decided to earn cheap political points instead.
Here’s the problem: The reserve is intended for emergencies, not as a resource to salvage Biden’s reputation. For a move that is only going to have a minimal impact on gas prices, it is incredibly irresponsible to use those resources right now.
“While this release could provide some near-term relief, it is not a long-term solution to meeting growing demand for affordable and reliable energy,” Frank Macchiarola of the American Petroleum Institute told Fox Business.
“Instead of managing from crisis to crisis, we should be focused on promoting policies that avoid them altogether through increased production of our nation’s domestic energy resources.”
There could be as many as 180 million barrels released in total, which dwarfs other withdrawals from past administrations, Axios reported. The SPR currently holds an estimated 568 million barrels.
When there is a natural disaster or a country angrily decides to cut the United States off from its oil supply, that is an appropriate opportunity to tap the SPR. For now, the Biden administration should be focusing on increasing domestic energy production to make oil cheaper for years to come. Instead, it has decided to pander to liberal environmental interests and force a binary choice between fossil fuels and green energy.
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Axios added that it is a 13-day process for those barrels to be placed on the market, and who knows how the situation will evolve between now and then. The Biden administration has proven itself to be full of short-term thinking when it comes to energy policy, just like its fellow Democrats were when it came to Trump’s aforementioned proposal.
