More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.... The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986....
Cargoes of SPR crude were also headed to the Netherlands and to a Reliance (RELI.NS) refinery in India, an industry source said. A third cargo headed to China, another source said.
Draining US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Lower Gas Prices....
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I must admit, my initial reaction to this was "so what?". It's a commodity, and the purpose of the release was to increase supply and drive prices down (in theory anyway), which should happen, if it's going to at all, regardless of *where* it goes. The only potential problem that I've seen mentioned (and not yet dived further into it) was the possibility that sales to China were routed through a Hunter Biden crony corp. If that's so, I'd like to see if there was undue pressure to sell through them instead of other channels, and whether the Big Guy got 10% or not.
If the SPR were just another kind of economic activity, I'd agree with you. Supply is fungible to some degree, and it might even be helpful to market activity to address supply issues wherever they are cropping up to prevent bottlenecks from impeding economic activity.
The SPR is a strategic reserve, however, meant to ensure American survivability in a crisis situation. It has been drained to levels not seen since the mid-80s to prop up Biden's election hopes in the face of high gas prices. Now it's being drained still further to keep prices low in China. That exposes us to the risks of an inadequate strategic reserve, in return for what is chiefly a partisan political interest.
Now it's known that Bai-Den released that crude to a Hunter Bai-Den-connected Chinese firm.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Yes, it does look that way Dad29.
Grim, I understand that the use of releases has been perverted to simplistic attempts to sway voters, but whatever the intent, it's still a commodity, and unless we needed it at processing plants here (and since we have a shortage of processing plants- refineries, I doubt that), I still think it's mostly simply a supply boost action- putting aside the crony connections that seem to be here, as with all things Biden.
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