US to sell 10M barrels of oil from strategic reserves to tame rising prices

The US plans to sell up to 10 million barrels of crude oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) to help lower energy costs for American families, the country's Energy Department has announced.

The sale is part of President Joe Biden's pledge to release a total of 180 million barrels from the SPR in March to support the market in the face of supply disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The move came after Biden had repeatedly asked OPEC producers to increase the group's collective output to provide additional market supply to lower crude prices.

However, as the group did not comply with his demands, a US-led coordinated effort ensued with other major energy-consuming nations to release reserves in China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the UK.

Deliveries of the less sulfuric sweet crude oil from the SPR will be made in November.

The department said with the sale of the last batch, some 165 million barrels of oil would be sold out of a total of 180 million barrels.

The US has the world's largest SPR of more than 600 million barrels stored in huge underground salt caverns at four sites located on the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Citing a recent analysis from the US Treasury Department, the US Energy Department said the SPR releases this year, along with coordinated releases from other consuming countries, have reduced gasoline prices by up to about 40 US cents per gallon.

Since June 2022, retail gas prices have dropped over more than 13 consecutive weeks, it added.

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Move comes under criticism

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene criticised the selling of strategic reserves and said she introduced articles of impeachment on US President Joe Biden.

In a video shared on Twitter, she accused Biden over "creating a national security crisis and a national energy emergency" by this selling and stated that "he must be impeached."

"He is draining our reserves and selling our oil, Americans' oil, to foreign countries and China is top buyer. China is our enemy, they are not friend, they are buying Americans' oil," Greene asserted.

She stressed the importance of the strategic petroleum reserves as emergency supply. The US reserves are now down to 434 million barrels of oil, she said, adding that it is nearly half of what it was when former President Donald Trump left the office.

"This is an outrage. This is completely wrong and no president of the US should be doing this to American people. It's going to create a national emergency crisis and that exactly President Joe Biden is doing," added Greene.

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