Debate fueled as Biden taps key petroleum stockpile

Rising gasoline prices highlight US political divide

In response to rising gasoline prices and amid political rumblings, United States President Joe Biden has tapped the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase the available oil supply while promoting a transition from fossil fuels.

The emergency reserve is stored in dozens of underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana. It was established in 1975 by President Gerald Ford after the 1973-74 oil embargo by Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.

The embargo was aimed at nations that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. The countries initially targeted were the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and the Netherlands. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen by nearly 300 percent.

In those days, and in the second oil shock of 1979 amid the Iranian revolution, drivers in the US had to wait in long lines for rationed gasoline－sometimes based on their vehicle license plate or days of the week.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, has been used in emergencies such as the buildup to the Gulf War in 1991 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was centered on the New Orleans area. Much of the oil infrastructure along the Gulf of Mexico was damaged in the devastating storm.

The SPR accommodates more than 700 million barrels to be used "to counter a disruption in commercial oil supplies which could threaten the US economy", according to the Department of Energy, or DoE, which manages the stockpile. The oil can be sold to other countries and used to pump more supply into the market.

The SPR inventory as of April 1 was 564.6 million barrels, comprising 249.8 million barrels of sweet crude and 314.8 million barrels of sour crude, according to the DoE.

As of August 2020, the four SPR storage locations were connected by government pipelines and commercially owned pipelines and terminals to 28 refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast and a total of six refineries in Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. The SPR is also connected to three marine terminals－two in Texas and one in Louisiana.

On March 31, Biden announced the largest-ever release from the reserve, with the aim of easing prices for consumers at the gasoline pumps.

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