You know, I haven’t quite figured this out. I was emailing with a person from the American Petroleum Institute and she asked if I had seen the announcement of President Obama releasing 30 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve ("The IEA said it would release 2 million barrels a day (bpd) over 30 days onto the world market to fill the gap in supplies left by the disruption to Libya’s output.", the US is supplying 1/2 of the 60M bbls total)? I said yes, but that I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure out what the actual dodge could be – it certainly is not Libyan oil "disruption" (what the official reason was). Or is it being used as camouflage for some "other" action "over here" ("pay no attention to that man behind the curtains").
So, we have nations that have to import oil to meet their needs now selling oil to lower the overall price of oil – right! Prices have been dropping here in the US for the last month – this is supposed to make a difference? In the grand scheme of things, the 30 million bbls is a spit in the bucket – it will not make a difference AT ALL in the cost at the gas pump. While it did drop the cost of a bbl by $5, it also sent the stock market down – way to go in messaging the message, dudes!
The SPR contains about 730M bbls and is supposed to be used ONLY in extreme conditions – a national disaster either naturally made (think Katrina shutting down the Gulf, a war cutting off our supplies, or OPEN repeating the ’70s). While 30M bbls is only 4% of the reserve, is this the proper role of that resource?
No, it isn’t. We have no shortages,…
