Energy Department to Buy 3 Million Oil Barrels to Replenish Strategic Reserves

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced that it intends to buy oil to replenish the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which has been depleted to multi-decade-low levels.
According to the DOE’s Request for Proposal (pdf) issued on May 15, the department is seeking to purchase up to three million barrels of sour crude oil produced in the United States. As of the week ending May 5, SPR stood at just 362 million barrels, a decline of 43 percent from when Biden assumed office. This is the lowest SPR level since the 1980s. Since 2000, the SPR has usually remained above 600 million barrels….}