In March, Joe Biden ordered the release of millions of barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to address the record-high gas prices that were plaguing the nation. Gas prices are still way above normal, and Biden is still tapping those reserves, but he has a plan: once oil prices drop below $80/barrel, we’ll restock it.
How considerate.
It’s just too bad we didn’t load up the reserves when gas prices were much cheaper.
Oh, wait, Trump tried to do that. But Democrats stopped him.
“It was only two years earlier that Democrats blocked former President Trump from filling the reserve when oil was hovering around $24 per barrel,” reports Bloomberg. “Trump in March of 2020 was looking to stabilize the oil industry after Covid-19 hit in 2020 and crushed global petroleum demand. With oil at the time priced at about $24 a barrel, Republicans proposed spending $3 billion to fill up the reserve. But the idea became a political football in larger negotiations on trillions in coronavirus relief, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer proclaiming that his party had blocked a ‘bailout for big oil.’”
This was an incredibly costly decision. According to Bloomberg, because of the Democrats’ grandstanding over “big oil” profits, the United States effectively lost billions in potential profits, not to mention that there was less supply
The Biden administration disputes Bloomberg’s report and claims that they don’t have any plan to restock the reserves until at least 2023. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make us feel any better. The reserve is now at crisis levels.
Not a meme stock or a collapsing currency, this is America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and this is before today's record release of 8.4mb, the largest ever. pic.twitter.com/yodSXxdjoO
— James Lavish (@jameslavish) September 12, 2022
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