President Biden's decision to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level in decades is back in the spotlight amid the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has caused oil prices to surge. On Monday, the Brent crude index, the worldwide oil benchmark, and the U.S. WTI index both surged more than 4% and inched closer to $90 a barrel as a result of volatility created by the Middle East crisis.
However, the Biden administration has depleted the SPR, which contains an emergency oil supply and was established for emergency scenarios, to its lowest level in four decades. The SPR currently contains 351.3 million barrels of oil, 44% lower than it was in January 2021 when Biden took office and a level last recorded in September 1983 prior to this year.
There are a lot of reasons why the Biden administration should not have used the SPR to try to bring down prices — one of which is that the SPR then isn't available if something serious happens. We're facing that right now,' Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital in an interview. 'The point was for the nation to have an emergency oil supply.
The SPR has a total capacity of 714 million barrels of oil and consists of four storage facilities in Texas and Louisiana. The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which established the reserve, prohibits the release of any SPR stocks unless there is a severe domestic supply shortage, an act of sabotage or natural disaster.