The Energy Department, at the behest of the Biden Administration, opened the spigots of the nation’s emergency petroleum reserves in 2022, trying to drive down soaring energy prices that President Joe Biden blamed on Russia’s war on Ukraine and not on his own unwillingness to unleash American energy capabilities. He promised to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve once the price was favorable.
But last week the Energy Department again canceled buying back oil for the reserve, which remains at historic lows. It’s become a pattern of announcing that there will be a purchase, and then canceling it quietly. This time it was for three million barrels for the Bayou Choctaw Strategic Petroleum Reserve site, and the reason given was “keeping the taxpayer’s interest at the forefront.”
In reality, three million barrels is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been drained under Biden.
“We will not award the current solicitations for the Bayou Choctaw SPR site and will solicit available capacity as market conditions allow. We will continue to monitor market dynamics,” the Energy Department said.
Biden has drained the SPR not only for Americans but has sent but 180 million barrels of U.S. emergency reserve oil to China, reducing the strategic reserves from over 600 million barrels to 363 million.
The price of oil is once again rising and is more than $85 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate, $6 a barrel more than the target price the administration said it would pay.
“It’s pure insanity to watch the Biden Administration cut American oil production and then claim they can’t refill our critical reserve because of the price,” said Daniel Turner, executive director of the energy group Power the Future in The Free Beacon. “Joe Biden drained the SPR for political reasons, cut our domestic production for his climate agenda, and now he’s leaving our critical reserve more vulnerable because he’s incompetent. As a result, Americans are paying more at the pump, more at the grocery store, and our SPR is less full during a time of rising turmoil in the Middle East.”
Biden is a crook and fool .
He betrayed America by using the petroleum reserve for political points.
I am old enough to remember when a former President was accused of trying to bankrupt the nation for saying we should refill the SPR at about $25 a barrel (or some other ridiculously low price.) Now petroleum is available at $80+ a barrel, and it is OK.
Funny, so am I.
We must be Pepperage Farm. We remember.
The D’s in Congress actually blocked purchasing 77,000,000 barrels at less than $30 per barrel. They claimed it was a bailout of big oil. That was when we had about 650,000,000 barrels in the SPR.
Bidenomics buy high and sell low, or just sell low and then don’t buy again…
More like give it away and buy from our enemies to replace it.
That’s bidenomics.
From the bottom up and the middle out….everyone must suffer.
They said the same thing about Reganomics.
The left attacked Reaganomics as “voodoo economics” as a political ploy. After Carter’s debacle, it took 6 years just to begin to recover from Carter – and in 8 more years, clinton balanced the budget, then promptly trashed his opportunity and let lefty economic fantasy take over again. No Republican attacked Reaganomics after the first year… Only the leftist media failed to understand Reagan – he was a unifying leader, a great communicator, that the media could not ignore or trash like they have with other Republican Presidents.
And, they were wrong.
No one said that Greg.
Like my 401 domestic oil production has never been higher.