Strategic Oil Reserve usage: Not unprecedented but not good

When was the last time the strategic oil reserve has been used to offset oil prices?  Today. Thanks Brandon; brilliant management of the U.S. economy.  What a turnip. This is Brandon's feeble attempt to placate everyone given his really horrible, terrible management of all things presidential:

...on Nov. 23 ordered 50 million barrels of oil released from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) to help cool surging energy costs and ease pain at the pump.

“American consumers are feeling the impact of elevated gas prices at the pump and in their home heating bills, and American businesses are, too, because oil supply has not kept up with demand as the global economy emerges from the pandemic,” the White House said in a Nov. 23 statement.

Crude oil prices have surged to seven-year highs, with global demand seeing a sharp rebound from the pandemic lows. Republicans have blamed Biden’s policies—such as nixing the Keystone XL pipeline project and freezing new oil and gas drilling leases on federal land—for contributing to rising prices.

Insisting that Biden “is using every tool available to him to work to lower prices and address the lack of supply” of oil, the White House said the U.S. Department of Energy will make available 32 million barrels of crude under an exchange mechanism from all four SPR storage sites. On top of this, another 18 million barrels will be made available by accelerating the sale of crude from the SPR under a previous congressional authorization.

Has this ever been done before? The strategic oil reserve has existed since 1975.  So you'd expect it would happen from time to time.  It has, but only four times. 

Emergency releases of the reserve have occurred three times. In 1991, at the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, the United States, assuring the adequacy of global oil supplies with its allies, announced the emergency sale on the day the war broke out in the Persian Gulf.

The second release occurred in September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina crushed the oil production, distribution, and refining industries in the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina’s destruction was so great that refiners requested emergency release, actually receiving approval within 24 hours of the hurricane’s landfall, and before the determination was made by President George W. Bush.

In June 2011, the United States and its partners in the International Energy Agency announced the release of 60 million barrels in response to crude oil supply disruptions in Libya and other countries. The U.S. obligation was half—30 million barrels—and 30.6 million barrels were delivered by August 2011.

So during a war (Bush 41), during the fallout from Hurricane Katrina (Bush 43), and then Obama because prices basically.  Then president Trump also did it but temporarily all the while ramping up U.S. oil production so that it would not be necessary and prices would not be so volatile.  It worked. 

Brandon has worked hard to reverse Trump's success in this regard.  So much so, that this becomes the fifth time it has happened and without the external shocks that cause every other time. COVID is no excuse, this is a result of his policy changes to reverse the nation's energy independence.

Moron or deliberately destroying America? You decide.