The Department of Energy on Friday announced the end of the replenishment of the country's strategic oil reserves, which were depleted by nearly half during President Biden's administration, and took the opportunity to praise the administration for the work it has done to maintain and replenish reserves.
However, as of November 1, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) inventory contained only 387.2 million barrels of oil, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That compares to the 638.1 million barrels that were in SPR inventory when Biden took office from former President Donald Trump.
The biggest drop was due to Biden's decision to flood the US oil market with millions of barrels of SPR to keep oil costs down following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The decision to do so was frequently met with backlash from critics, who argued the move was “political” to keep gas prices low ahead of this month's elections.
“This administration's SPR was used as a piggy bank to drive down oil prices,” said Trishia Curtis, an economist at the American Energy Institute.
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“This is smoke and mirrors to make everything look correct,” added Phil Flynn, senior markets analyst at Price Futures Group, according to Market Watch.
In an aerial view, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage at the Bryan Mound site on October 19, 2022 in Freeport, Texas.
Despite the drastic drop in TPE during Biden's term, Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praised the Biden-Haris administration for “maintaining[ing] SPR as the world's largest emergency crude oil supply” and for “putting the economic and energy security of the American people first,” in a Friday news release from the Department of Energy about SPR's latest purchase.
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“With the award of these contracts, the DOE has fully utilized all funds allocated for crude oil purchases following the sale of 180 million barrels in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has secured an additional 20 million barrels at a good price for taxpayers,” Granholm concluded. .
President Biden, joined by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, gives an update on the government's response to Hurricanes Milton and Helene in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on October 11, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
However, for Steve Milloy, a fellow at the Energy and Environmental Law Institute and former transition adviser to the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency, the numbers don't add up.
“It's misleading,” Milloy told Fox News Digital. “They've only bought back a third of what they let go. Now they're trying to say they actually bought more, or that they gave back more, but what they're counting is the oil that's already there.”
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Meanwhile, energy expert Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition, posited that it was “counterintuitive” for the Biden administration to claim it has focused on America's energy security.
“For them it is quite contradictory to proclaim that they are [replenishing the SPR]and at the same time they say they want to end oil and gas,” Barnard said.
President Biden listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on April 15, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“It feels like a whiplash between Biden's comments during the 2019 and 2020 campaign, where he even told some voters, 'I want to end fossil fuels completely.' But at the same time claiming credit for replenishing the SPR, by at the same time canceling the Keystone pipeline, at the same time going and begging the Saudis to produce more oil and ship it to the United States,” Barnard said. “Their energy idealism has collided with energy reality.”
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Leaving the White House, Biden has been imposing tighter environmental restrictions, including this week, when Biden approved a new tax on methane emissions and implemented tighter restrictions on oil, solar and wind development across more than 6,500 miles. squares of federal land.
The Energy Department declined to comment for this story.
