The mess Biden created by his improper, nonsensical use of our emergency oil stockpile - the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - was entirely predictable. It was the action of a flailing administration trying to undo the damage of its own policies.
Here’s why it’s bad policy.
First, it’s critical to understand exactly what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) does and doesn’t do. It doesn’t *store* gasoline, but reserves of largely light sweet and sour crude that can be used to make gas for our cars.
That’s great. We’re glad to have that for emergencies - like when a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. But it was never designed for its current use under Biden: backfilling the entirety of the global oil market.
Biden is rapidly depleting this source of emergency crude, in a desperate attempt to trick Americans into believing that releasing 1M barrel per day (bpd) from the SPR can make a dent in a global oil market that produces 80M bpd. That’s a lie, of course.
Republicans at the Energy and Commerce Committee, where I serve, actually warned Biden about this - that releasing barrels from America’s emergency stockpile will do nothing to control prices, nothing to reduce the pain at the pump for Americans, and do long-term damage to our strategic reserves.
And now, while we deplete our reserves, China is *increasing* their fuel reserves almost barrel for barrel what we’re decreasing from ours. China now controls the world’s largest stockpile of oil at around 950M barrels. We weakened our stockpile and helped our biggest adversary.
This is the sheer incompetence of this administration.
