Vicky Arias, FISM News
The Biden administration’s depletion of America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has dropped the nation’s oil stockpile to levels not seen in nearly 40 years.
The petroleum reserve serves as an oil backup, providing the United States with petroleum in times of crisis.
President Joe Biden is selling millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s petroleum reserves to foreign countries. According to Reuters, “more than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.”
Additionally, rather than increase domestic oil production at home in the United States, President Joe Biden placed pauses on oil leases, in an effort to stop the drilling and extraction of oil at home in America. Instead of encouraging new oil production in the U.S., the president has tapped our national oil reserves to stymie the increasing price of gas and oil – a move some see as politically motivated.
Things like political instability, legislation, and hurricanes affect oil supply chain distribution. Given the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the fact that the U.S. is in the midst of hurricane season, drastically low petroleum reserves are cause for concern.
Some may remember the oil embargo placed on the United States by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the mid-1970s, causing excessive lines at gas stations to buy gas. The embargo was placed on the United States by Arab members of OPEC due to America’s support of Israel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973.
According to Forbes, “as a result of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Congress established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The law was designed ‘to reduce the impact of severe energy supply interruptions’ such as that caused by the embargo.”
Additional problems, like hurricanes, can result in catastrophic situations. These types of storms can knock out entire power grids and put oil refineries in the U.S. Gulf regions temporarily out of commission, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power and grinding oil production to a halt. In situations like these, the U.S. government takes emergency action to make petroleum available to affected states.
In times of emergency, low petroleum reserves will lead to dependence on other nations for oil needs here in the United States.
Europe is one example of the disastrous effects of depending on foreign oil for domestic energy needs. European dependence on Russian oil has led to record high gas prices for much of Europe, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to affect oil acquisition for most European countries.
Selling off our country’s domestic petroleum reserves leaves our nation vulnerable.
As reported by Just the News, “New York Rep. Claudia Tenney is … blasting Biden for sacrificing U.S. energy security to his own partisan political interests.” Tenney stated that “for purely cynical political reasons, Joe Biden needed to lower the price of gas before this midterm election, to try to bring back the numbers for the Democrats and to try to bring back his abysmal poll ratings.”
“President Biden is recklessly draining the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to insulate his party from the political fallout of high oil prices before the upcoming midterm elections,” Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, said.