Biden Refills America’s Oil Reserve So He Can Manipulate Another Election

Biden is treating the SPR like a pile of chips in a poker game against Republicans instead of a treasured national resource. It’s a price and political manipulation that everyday Americans don’t understand. Yet, everyone will suffer if an economic or geopolitical crisis emerges and America finds itself unprepared.

The capacity of the SPR was set in 1975 at 714 million barrels, the largest publicly known emergency supply in the world. The SPR held 300 million barrels in 1983, but that amount grew steadily in the 1980s and 1990s. By 2010. the SPR actually reached its peak capacity of over 700 million barrels and held that level through 2016.

Slight drawdowns occurred from 2017 to 2020, but the SPR was still near capacity at 600 million barrels when Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. From there, the amount of oil in the SPR collapsed.

On March 31, 2022, President Biden announced the SPR would be reduced by 1 million barrels per day for the next 180 days. It’s no coincidence that the announced drawdown ran through September 30, 2022, just weeks before the mid-term election.

Biden’s draining of the oil reserve was a blatant effort to get inflation and gas prices down in time for the election. In some ways, it worked. Inflation fell to 7.1% on Election Day, and the national average price of regular gasoline fell from $5.02 per gallon on June 14, 2022, to $3.54 per gallon by November 2022, a 30% drop just in time for the elections.

Biden’s Democrats held the Senate and came close to holding the House of Representatives in what was supposed to be a “red wave” election. It was more of a red ripple.

Biden’s gas price manipulation plan worked. Where does that leave us today, with another national election just seventeen months away? According to this article, Biden price manipulators will go ahead with a refill of the SPR, at least to some extent.

It’s smart politics. Biden wants to take the “drain the reserve” charge off the table. Refilling the SPR insulates him from the charge.

Oil and gasoline prices have come down a lot. Oil was near $120 per barrel in March 2022 when the big drain began. Oil prices were down to $85 per barrel on Election Day 2022, and gas prices were down a lot too. Now Biden can look like a genius trader. Sell high, buy low!

By filling up the reserve now, they can drain it again if prices go up ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Refilling the reserve now lets Biden drain it again in 2024 for his reelection campaign. All of this is deeply cynical and manipulative.

The SPR is for national security. It’s not a political plaything. But the White House doesn’t care. To them, everything is a political tool to maintain power.

A still largely depleted reserve will deprive the U.S. of its energy cushion to protect itself and possibly help allies in Europe. Biden is gambling with U.S. national security to score a few cheap political points. It’s typical of Biden. But it’s a betrayal of presidents of both parties who have worked to maintain the SPR since 1975.

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