Strategically Speaking

Today it is being discussed.  President Obama is considering using petroleum currently stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).  This move would be a response that would do so little to alleviate the demand an high price for oil, but would seriously damage the ability of the government to respond to a crisis that could arise.

The SPR is currently over 700 million barrels of oil, the largest such supply in the world.  The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) dictates the need and usage conditions for using this reserve of oil.  Basically, the limit is 4.4 million barrels per day, and during periods of interrupted oil supply.

The current oil market is very unstable considering the political unrest in a number of Arab nations in the middle east and northen Africa.  It is also affected by the current policies of the Obama administration, which is unfriendly to oil explortion, drilling and refining.  In fact, the Obama administration is unfriendly to any oil, nuclear, coal or gas utilization.  Environmentalists are opposed to using fossil fuels, and President Obama is with them.  Consequently, the cost of oil is hovering near or er $100 per barrel and gas is over $4.00 per gallon in most states.

Here is why dipping into the SPR is a bad idea at this time.  Oil production is not interrupted, but the prices is climbing.  Using the SPR now is technically a violation of the EPCA, or against the law.  The current reserve, if used by all Americans as the current flow of oil is used, would last approximately 34 days.  This is an insignificant amount of time.  The SPR is intended to be used primarily by our military if other oil supplies dry up, not for gassing up SUV's on family vacation.

President Obama would better serve Americans by easy the restrictions on oil drilling to increase our domestic supply of oil.  This would reduce the dependence on imported oil, put many Americans back to work, and drive some ecomic recovery.  Dipping into the SPR would do none of that, but would impact negatively the long tem oil interests of the USA.