• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20 March 20, 2023
Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action March 20, 2023
Window for 1.5°C ‘Rapidly Closing’, IPCC Warns March 20, 2023
Swift Action, Inclusive Resilience Vital in Face of Overlapping Climate Hazards March 20, 2023
Shift from Fossils to Renewables is Quickest, Cheapest Path to Cut Emissions, IPCC Report Shows March 20, 2023
Next
Prev

Trump Proposes to Cut Strategic Petroleum Reserve 50% by 2027

May 24, 2017
Reading time: 2 minutes

Department of Energy/Flickr

Department of Energy/Flickr

 

The 2018 White House budget released this week includes a proposal to sell off half of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 688.1-million-barrel stockpile first established in December 1975 to protect the country from oil supply shocks like the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

The Trump administration is pitching the plan as a deficit reduction measure worth US$16 billion in revenue over the next decade, made possible by the increase in U.S. domestic oil and gas production.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

“The proposal probably will run into sharp differences in Congress and among oil experts, most of whom say the reserve should remain a buffer in an emergency,” the Washington Post reports. “The administration has proposed selling off 270 million barrels from the reserve by the year 2027, a move that it also said would allow it to retire two out of the four Gulf Coast facilities that store the oil.”

Coverage in the Post and elsewhere highlights the continuing disagreement among expert analysts on whether the U.S. still needs the SPR.

“The reserve was created at a time when the nation was very dependent on imported oil,” wrote economist Philip Verleger in 2014. “The dependency is in the past. The Reserve no longer serves the purpose for which it was developed.”

“The United States definitely doesn’t need as much SPR as they have now lower imports,” agreed Amrita Sen of the consultancy Energy Aspects.

But “the risk of complete collapse in Venezuela is just one of many reminders that the world remains vulnerable to oil price shocks, and those will be felt by U.S. consumers at the pump just as much today,” countered ex-Obama climate and energy security advisor Jason Bordoff, now director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is America’s only formal short-term line of defence against oil supply disruptions and price spikes,” added Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America’s Future Energy. “While we’ve been lulled into a false sense of complacency by the current period of relatively low oil prices, disruptions and volatility in the oil market are alive and well.”

The Post concludes that a decade-long plan to trim the SPR by 50% would have “limited impact” on world old prices. “The sale would amount to just 74,000 barrels a day, a modest amount of global consumption of 96 million barrels a day. But it would slow down efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to reduce global inventory levels that are near record highs.”



in Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Kenuoene/pixabay
Ending Emissions

Shift from Fossils to Renewables is Quickest, Cheapest Path to Cut Emissions, IPCC Report Shows

March 20, 2023
210
U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr
Oil & Gas

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
169
/Pikist
Jobs & Training

Workers Move to Renewables as U.S. Fossil Sector Sheds Jobs

March 8, 2023
110

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement/flickr

Willow Oil Project in Alaska Faces Legal Challenges, Economic Doubts

March 19, 2023
528
Kenuoene/pixabay

Shift from Fossils to Renewables is Quickest, Cheapest Path to Cut Emissions, IPCC Report Shows

March 20, 2023
210
IFRC Intl. Federation:Twitter

Devastating Impacts, Affordable Climate Solutions Drive IPCC’s Urgent Call for Action

March 21, 2023
792
Kern River Valley Fire Info/Facebook

SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Defuse the Climate Time Bomb’ with Net-Zero by 2040, Guterres Urges G20

March 20, 2023
248
Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine/Wikimedia Commons

IPCC Report Charts a Course for Ottawa’s ‘Clean Technology’ Budget

March 21, 2023
142
NTSB

Ohio Train Derailment, Toxic Chemical Spill Renews Fears Over Canada-U.S. Rail Safety

March 8, 2023
1.5k

Recent Posts

U.S. National Park Service/rawpixel

Window for 1.5°C ‘Rapidly Closing’, IPCC Warns

March 20, 2023
74
FMSC/Flickr

Swift Action, Inclusive Resilience Vital in Face of Overlapping Climate Hazards

March 20, 2023
69
Kiara Worth, UNClimateChange/flickr

Gap Between IPCC’s Science, National Actions Sets Challenge for COP 28

March 21, 2023
72
Photo by IISD/ENB

IPCC Sees Deeper Risk in Overshooting 1.5°C Warming Threshold

March 20, 2023
46
EcoFlight

Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Territory to Fracking, Promises Land Restoration

March 19, 2023
449
Wikimedia Commons/Humans of Vanuatu

Six Countries Call for Fossil-Free Pacific

March 19, 2023
51
Next Post
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Wikimedia Commons

Trump Budget Slashes EPA Funding, Opens Arctic Refuge for Oil Drilling

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}