Last Updated on July 11, 2022
The Biden Administration sent millions of barrels of US reserve oil — which is meant to lower domestic fuel prices and relieve Americans — to Communist China and other foreign nations when they opened the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve last month. The prices of gas and diesel have been on a steady climb in the US since Biden took office, having shut down several large-scale pipelines and domestic energy operations. Those changes made prices skyrocket and renewed America’s dependency on foreign fuel after having achieved energy independence and energy supplier status under President Trump.
With the average gas price hovering around $5 a gallon nationwide, and several states reporting prices per gallon well above the $5 mark, the Biden Administration moved last month to open the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves. This came in a supposed effort to relieve American motorists and lower gas prices by way of a supply increase, and also put the reserves at their lowest level since 1986.
In opening the reserves, Biden moved to send 5 million barrels of American reserve oil to Communist China and other nations, including America’s supplicant European allies – something that market and energy analysts say is to blame for the lack of economic relief felt by American motorists and fuel consumers.
“The export of crude and fuel is blunting the impact of the moves by U.S. President Joe Biden to lower record pump prices,” Reuters reported last week. “Biden on Saturday renewed a call for gasoline suppliers to cut their prices, drawing criticism from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” the Reuters report went on in saying, showing that Biden is now going back and forth between blaming Russians and blaming the oil industry for the state of the market and the failure of his far-left energy policies.
Though the strategic reserves are at their lowest level in decades, the Biden Administration says they will continue draining them at a record pace until October. After that, it is unclear how and if they plan to supplement the US market to keep costs low and how they plan to refill the reserves. It should be noted that any economic benefit being experienced from the reserve draining will expire just after the midterm elections.
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The US started its Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 after oil sales were disrupted by the 1973-74 oil trade embargo led by Arab oil-producing nations in response to America and other Western powers embracing and supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Additionally, under a 1975 agreement that required Israel to give the Sanai Peninsula back to Egypt, America is bound to give Israel oil out of the strategic reserves if they so need it. While that deal between nations was only meant to last five years from 1975, it has been extended and continues to be in effect, most recently being extended in 2015 for a ten-year period.
The strategic reserves are housed at multiple sites across Texas and Louisiana, each containing tens to hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.
