Senior administration officials have repeatedly blamed OPEC+ for the rise in oil prices, which they say is boosting inflation and threatening the global economic recovery after last year's pandemic. 

Speculation is growing the administration could order the release of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to lower oil prices after OPEC+ last week rejected calls to accelerate its output increases.

In political terms, releasing oil from the SPR would demonstrate the administration's concern about rising oil prices and the impact on the cost of living for households and businesses. But in practical terms, it is unclear whether a release would have much impact on prices beyond the very short term because the volume of extra oil that could be made available would be too small (see "SPR Sale Would Release Only 60MM Barrels; Will Bring Even Higher Oil Prices: Goldman").

Reserve History

The SPR was created to hold up to 1 billion barrels of petroleum by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-163) in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973/74.

"Congress finds that the storage of substantial quantities of petroleum products will diminish the vulnerability of the United States to the effects of a severe energy supply interruption, and provide limited protection from the short-term, consequences of interruptions in supplies of petroleum products", according to section 151 of the act.

The SPR is part of a network of emergency reserves maintained by International Energy Agency (IEA) member countries, under the Agreement on an International Energy Program of 1974.