Deep underground, in heavily guarded salt caves along America’s South Coast, lies the world’s largest supply of crude oil. This is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an arsenal for bad times. Like now. On Wednesday, Joe Biden decided to take a bite out of emergency supplies for the second time in his presidency.
The United States is going to release 15 million barrels of oil. That comes on top of the 165 million that have already been put on the market since Biden first turned on the tap this spring. The level of the reserve is the lowest in 40 years. Presidents are hesitant with their emergency supplies. Barack Obama released some oil after unrest in Libya, George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina and his father George HW Bush during the Gulf War – not quite as many as Biden this year.
The president is in a difficult position. The war in Ukraine has caused oil prices worldwide to skyrocket. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, resists any US pressure to pump more. This month, their oil alliance Opec+ even decided to scale back production by 2 million barrels, after which the price rocketed further. For Biden, this comes at an extremely dangerous time: it is election time.
Democrats vulnerable
In three weeks, Americans will go to the polls for the midterms, the crucial test for Biden’s presidency. There is a real chance that his Democratic party will lose the majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. Then it would be virtually impossible for him to realize his ambitions as president.
Recent polls show the economy is the most important consideration for their vote for American voters by distance. High inflation and fuel prices are citizens’ biggest concerns, more than undermining democracy or abolishing abortion. That makes the Democrats vulnerable. You don’t win votes at the pump, but you can lose them there.
The Republicans are campaigning virulently on the economic situation, which distracts from their own vulnerabilities. Inflation stands at 8.2 percent. Gasoline costs an average of $1 per liter, lower than the record price of $1.29 this summer, but higher than a month ago.
Putin’s price hike
Republicans criticize Biden’s choice to use the emergency stock to bring that price down. They portray him as opportunistic. “A short-sighted and dangerous decision to risk our energy security like this,” said Kansas Senator Jerry Morgan.
The White House dismissed those allegations. “Shouldn’t the president do everything he can to bring prices down?” said spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre. She invariably refers to ‘Putin’s price hike’, to emphasize to voters that it is not Biden who is to blame for the high petrol price, but the Russian president with his invasion of Ukraine.
Biden is keeping open the possibility of releasing more oil at a later date, a decision that has rested exclusively with the president since 1975. After the latest oil has been released, about 400 of the maximum 714 million barrels remain in the emergency supply – still more than any country in the world.
The question is how much the released barrels will help Biden get to the ballot box. It takes a while before they are actually pumped out of the salt caves. With large amounts of water, the crude oil must be lifted from the emergency supply, with a maximum of 4.4 million barrels per day. The last reserve oil will appear on the US market in December, a month after the elections.