The sale of the first 30 million of the 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) by the Biden administration was celebrated in the White House in April 2022. At the time, this action seemed unheard of for an election year.
Similar to this, the Energy Department welcomed in May the scheduled liquidation of one million barrels from the NGSR, the SPR’s Perth Amboy to Boston portion, with the goal of bringing down gas prices.
Fox News Digital dug further into the data to determine whether critics of the administration’s accusations that Biden is using US oil reserves as an unprecedented political football rather than just making travel more affordable for Americans are justified.
The results demonstrated that Biden, along with former Presidents Trump and Clinton, oversaw the greatest historical fall in supplies during the SPR’s most extensive drawdowns.
In the 2022 case, after Siberia was banned as a fuel supply for the United States, a White House statement partially attributed supply difficulties that drove up oil prices to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war of Ukraine.
This year’s discount, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, is proof that the administration is “laser focused” on reducing consumer costs, especially in advance of the summer travel season.
“By strategically releasing this reserve in between Memorial Day and July 4th, we are ensuring sufficient supply flows to the tri-state and northeast at a time hardworking Americans need it the most,” Granholm stated in a statement.
Data obtained by Fox News revealed that the SPR was most depleted under Biden’s presidency in the years after it was brought up to date during the Carter years (it was created as an energy security mechanism after the 1973 oil crisis).
The SPR recorded 112.5 million barrels in January 1981 after the 1980 election, and by the time President Ronald Reagan’s term ended in January 1989, it had increased to almost 450 million barrels. The SPR can hold up to 714 million barrels at its maximum capacity as of 2023.
The SPR’s capacity was expanded by both Presidents Bush: George H.W. Bush added 13.8 million barrels, while his son, who declared a concerted effort to bolster reserves following 9/11, added a net 162 million barrels by January 2009.
Twenty-one million barrels were used in Operation Desert Storm, and an additional eleven million were used after Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the coastal oil refineries.
The reserves have been exhausted under the administrations of every president since that time, including Clinton.
The Trump administration supervised a drawdown of almost 57 million barrels, while the Arkansas Democrat witnessed a net depletion of 33.7 million barrels.
During his presidency, President Obama oversaw a reduction in the SPR of almost 9 million barrels.
According to Fox News’ study, president-ordered releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves—like those that occurred during Desert Storm and after Hurricane Katrina—have only infrequently occurred and only in significant cases qualified as “emergency release” situations.
Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a Congressional Research Service report stated that such withdrawals from SPR reserves are acceptable and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as politically driven.
It is also legal for Congress to order the sales of oil reserves on occasion in order to finance legislative priorities.
This time, however, congressional Republicans have criticized Biden, claiming that in an election year, he is manipulating America’s energy security for political purposes.
In a sharp letter to Granholm, leading Republicans on their respective energy committees, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers of Washington, accused Biden of precisely that:
“Since 1983, the SPR has decreased to its lowest point under President Biden. At 290 million barrels, the largest sale in history has been managed by the DOE. There were 638 million barrels of oil in the SPR when President Biden assumed office in January 2021, they stated.
“Today, the SPR currently contains 367 million barrels of oil, which represents nearly a 42 percent decline from when President Biden took office.”
“A transparent attempt to influence the midterm elections and distract from the Biden administration’s energy policy failures,” the lawmakers labeled the Biden release in 2022.
McMorris-Rodgers wrote the Strategic Production Response Act, which forbade depletion for “nonemergency purposes” and limited SPR drawdowns until Congress could oversee the situation. This act appeared to be an attempt to avoid politicization. The House approved the bill.
Democrats, on the other hand, blocked Trump when he tried to do the reverse and fill the SPR at the extremely low $24 a barrel of oil.
At the time, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, praised the block, saying that taking the clause out of the measure “eliminated a $3 billion bailout for Big Oil.”
Nonetheless, the McMorris-Rodgers bill was announced to be opposed by the White House, which stated that it would “significantly weaken a critical energy security tool.”
“This administration’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been essential to protecting our energy security and to lowering gas prices for Americans,” the White House stated in 2023.
For the purposes of this report, the White House and the Energy Department did not reply to requests for more comment.
