Remember the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

| January 14, 2023

Once upon a time, long,  long ago in a country almost forgotten, wise leaders in that oil-using place decided that having some emergency supplies of usable oil was a good idea. Gee, what a good idea! Then, the new leader of that then-oil-independent country decided to turn them oil-import-dependent, so he killed permitting for a new massive project to get more oil from friendly sources, and begged quasi-hostile enemies to produce the oil the country needed to destroy that oil independence. Then he implemented bad fiscal and monetary policies to increase inflation to levels not seen in almost five decades – what could be better? Selling off oil reserves to try and drive some of the inflation he created down? Yes, he did – he pulled 220,000,000 barrels of oil from that reserve and sold it, what a wise and wonderful leader he was.

And that 180 million barrels may never be returned to the SPR. (Actual sales were 220 million barrels – Ed.)

“DOE will only select bids that meet the required crude specifications and that are at a price that is a good deal for taxpayers,” the Department of Energy said,

When the administration was releasing crude from the SPR, there wasn’t any mention of specifications. The only important thing was the volume. At the time, critics noted that the SPR contains mostly light, sweet crude…

DoE said they would only buy back when the price hit $67-70 a barrel. It actually got to $75 a barrel, which in the days of F35 cost overruns is pretty close – but DoE isn’t buying. Second, they just haven’t got the money to buy enough anyway.

Lee (Jinjoo Lee, WSJ) reports that the sale of 180 million barrels of crude from the SPR last year probably generated some $17.3 billion in proceeds at an average price of $96 per barrel. But of this $17.3 billion, $12.5 billion was set aside for use by Congress in the latest spending bill to fill the gap left by the cancellation of previously scheduled SPR sales for the period 2024 to 2027, according to ClearView Energy Partners.

This leaves the DoE with $4.8 billion to spend on replenishing the SPR, and, according to Lee, this could only buy 70 million barrels at WTI prices of $70 per barrel. This is less than half of what was released last year.   Oilprice.com

So Congress and Biden have successfully run the reserves down from close to 600 million barrels down to less than 400 million barrels and we don’t have the money to replenish. Literally spending trillions on everything under the sun, but not replacing what they essentially stole from the American people. Kinda reminds you of Social Security, doesn’t it?

Obviously this is a far more complex issue than one quick column will address, but I thought you should keep it on your radar.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Politics, Usual Suspects

21 Comments
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Sapper3307

He has a strategy?

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Anonymous

If the Chicoms attack Taiwan in the next few months, we may know why.

AZRobert

China will make the move just before President McCarthy is sworn in as the chaos of Plugs and Kamal going down causes the left to lose it.

Hack Stone

Kind of like America selling all of its scrap metal to Japan in the 1930’s.

rgr769

Yes, but look how they returned that scrap metal.

jeff LPH 3 63-66

Went to Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th 1941

Hack Stone

Exactly.

A Proud Infidel®™

Ditto with oil!

jeff LPH 3 63-66

Including the NYC Manhatten 3rd ave elevated subway track rails.and columns.

Mason

As long as it’s a “minor incursion”, China will be fine.

Anonymous

A “mostly peaceful” invasion of Taiwan.

KoB

You will never convince me that 81 million people voted for this senile, grifting, self enriching, pedophilic, worthless career politician, that has been proven to be a lying, embellishing POS for over 50 years. He was installed to be the puppet of foreign and domestic enemies of our Republic to ensure the “fundamental change of the face of America”.

rgr769

Ditto. Especially, when one looks at the footage of the few people turning up for his campaign events. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to watch “2000 Mules.”

5JC

The thing that pisses me off the most was the SPR was already down 13% IN 2020 and Trump tried to refill it. Oil contract were negative value which meant that they were paying people to haul it off due to covid lock down. The Democrats voted it down as a “gift” to oil companies. So China essentially got free oil that we needed. It all goes back to one question; “How fucking stupid are you?”

Graybeard

Quit asking that. They’re taking it as a challenge.

Av8or33

Stupid or intentional? I think we may be at a level of corruption and greed in our government unrivaled only by the break up of the Soviet Union, and we may be headed to a similar fate.

Fyrfighter

Intentional applies to those behind these actions, stupid applies to the sheep that support these criminals

CDR D

Kinda like this, I suspect:

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RGR 4-78

Sell low buy high, poke the taxpayer in the eye, enrich yourself you’ll never fry. 😡 

A Proud Infidel®™

And just how many tax dollars have been WASTED on boondoggles and pork from which the Biden Syndicate and other pols are going to get generous kickbacks?

jeff LPH 3 63-66

If I only was oily on the site, I could have been number one (1)