Biden-Harris Strategic Petroleum Reserves Still at Record Low

August 14, 2024

Throughout the past four years, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has been drained. Not because of restlessness in the Middle East, natural disasters, or any true emergency that would warrant using barrels from the SPR but for political gain. Now, we have an uphill battle to replenish our emergency reserves.

The Washington Free Beacon reports,

“And although the Department of Energy said it had purchased upwards of 40 million barrels to replenish the reserve, as of Monday, the reserve has only increased by 29.1 million barrels from its low recorded in July 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration. That increase represents just 14 percent of the total amount Biden ordered to be withdrawn from the reserve in 2021 and 2022. By repurchasing just a portion of the oil sold, the administration appears to be content leaving the reserve at a far lower volume than normal for the foreseeable future, leaving the nation vulnerable to future energy crises.”

Even with the recent purchase, our SPR is nowhere near what it was before the Biden-Harris administration,

“Overall, the current level of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 376.5 million barrels, down 41 percent compared to its level of 638.1 million barrels recorded in January 2021 when Biden took office. The president’s actions took the reserve down to its lowest levels since August 1983, shortly after the reserve had been established by Congress as a mechanism to bolster energy security.”

This is another disappointing instance where the Biden-Harris Administration has put the United States at a global disadvantage to advance a political agenda. We need an administration that understands they must get out of the way of America’s domestic energy producers so that they can reverse the damage of his reckless decision to drain the SPR.