President Joe Biden could unveiled the biggest-ever release of crude from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve Thursday in the latest effort to tame historically high energy prices.
The White House is considering the biggest-ever release of crude from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve this week, multiple media outlets reported Thursday, as President Joe Biden looks to dampen the impact of record high energy prices and the fastest domestic inflation rates in more than four decades.
Reports suggest the President is set to authorize the release of 180 million barrels from the SPR, spread over several months, in order to bring down global crude prices and ease the supply hit from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The move would mark the third release from the SPR in six months, and the largest-ever from the nation’s emergency stockpile, which sits at the lowest levels since 2002, according to Energy Department data published Wednesday.
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OPEC leaders, as well as non-member allies, are also slated to meet today in Vienna to discuss output levels, but the cartel is widely-expected to maintain the gradual pace of production increases, adding around 400,000 barrels per day to the global market.
WTI crude futures for May delivery were marked $6.52 lower from Wednesday’s close at $101.30 per barrel in overnight trading, while Brent contracts for the same month, the global pricing benchmark, fell $6.58 to trade at $106.87 per barrel.
Recent moves to release crude from the emergency store have had the opposite affect on markets, however, with U.S. crude prices rising 18.6% from the time Biden first tapped the SPR in late November to the extended spike triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Prior to that, global oil prices rose 12% in the two weeks following President Barack Obama’s decision to release 30 million barrels from the SPR in June of 2011 to offset supply disruptions linked to the civil war in Libya.
Sanctions on the sale of Russian crude, as well as the shutdown of a key export hub operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which accounts for about 1% of global output, have also helped lift crude prices since the late February invasion.
U.S. gasoline prices, which reached an all-time high of $4.331 per gallon on March 11, were also likely to move, with the AAA pegging the average national cost per gallon at $4.225 per gallon.
Exxon Mobil (XOM) – Get Exxon Mobil Corporation Report shares were marked 2.12% lower in pre-market trading Thursday at $83.78 each while Chevron (CVX) – Get Chevron Corporation Report fell 1.5% to $1663.05 and Occidental Petroleum (OXY) – Get Occidental Petroleum Corporation Report — the latest strategic investment of billionaire Warren Buffett — slumped 2.8% to $55.88 each.
