Call it an election year conversion or just a coincidence. As he faces a tough reelection campaign, President Joe Biden is finally looking to replenish the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), after he spent the past three years draining it to historic lows. The Biden Department of Energy is touting a plan to purchase three million barrels of crude for the SPR this spring, claiming it's a "good deal for taxpayers" since the price of oil is $16 less than what they sold it for earlier.
But critics claim the White House is using fuzzy math. "Three million barrels is a drop in the bucket compared to the 300 million or so barrels that have been shed over the last couple of years," says Karr Ingham, petroleum economist with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. "The administration put themselves in this position by using that Strategic Petroleum Reserve almost entirely for political purposes---to make gasoline prices lower for Americans during an election year. I think that was a foolish thing to do."
As for whether buying back the oil is a "good deal," the administration is touting a $79 a barrel price tag, when former President Trump filled the SPR back when the price was about half of that. "It would be hard to find the time now when you could grab a large volume of crude oil and purchase it into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when crude oil is less than even 50 bucks a barrel," says Ingham.
At the current pace and price, it would take 25 years and cost more than 29 billion dollars to completely refill the SPR. "I don't know if they need to refill it completely, but I think they should get a little more hasty about replenishing that thing, just because it does serve a strategic purpose," says Ingham. "That thing is not called 'strategic' for nothing."
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