Oil reserves replenished by former President Donald Trump are being raided by President Joe Biden in an effort to address Americans’ displ...
Oil reserves replenished by former President Donald Trump are being raided by President Joe Biden in an effort to address Americans’ displeasure with rising fuel prices during Biden’s presidency, leading Trump to ask, “Is this any way to run a Country?”
Energy costs are one component of the rampant inflation that has become a fixture in Biden’s economy through the summer and fall, spurring Americans to give Biden abysmal poll numbers.
In response, Biden has been dealing with China and other nations to jointly release oil on the theory that this will bring down prices.
“Today, the President is announcing that the Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply,” the White House said in a statement on Monday.
The statement said China, Japan, South Korea, India and the United Kingdom would join in.
“Over the last several weeks as reports of this work became public, oil prices are down nearly 10 percent,” the White House said.
However, in looking at what motorists are shelling out at the pump, a statement from AAA said the relief has not reached average Americans.
“Today’s national average of $3.40 is 3 cents more than a month ago and $1.29 more than a year ago, and 81 cents more than in 2019,” AAA said on its website.
Trump lambasted the move in a statement Tuesday morning.
“For decades our Country’s very important Strategic Oil Reserves were low or virtually empty in that no President wanted to pay the price of filling them up. I filled them up three years ago, right to the top, when oil prices were very low,” the former president said. “Those reserves are meant to be used for serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else.
“Now I understand that Joe Biden will be announcing an ‘attack’ on the newly brimming Strategic Oil Reserves so that he could get the close to record-setting high oil prices artificially lowered.
“We were energy independent one year ago, now we are at the mercy of OPEC, gasoline is selling for $7 in parts of California, going up all over the Country, and they are taking oil from our Strategic Reserves.
“Is this any way to run a Country?”
In March 2020, as oil prices slid, Trump said he would fill the reserves, which were 77 million barrels short of capacity at the time, according to Reuters.
“Based on the prices of oil, I’ve … instructed the secretary of energy to purchase, at a very good price, large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. strategic reserve,” he said. “We’re going to fill it right up to the top.”
Reuters said it was the first fill-up for the reserves since then-President George W. Bush ordered one after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
In 2005, Bush sold off 11 million barrels of oil for the reserve and loaned 12.6 million barrels to oil companies to address spiking gas prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to NBC News.
In 2011, the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, sold off 30 million barrels of oil due to high prices caused by unrest in Libya, in which that administration was an active player, according to NPR.
A budget deal under then-President Barack Obama in 2015 called for selling off oil reserves annually to put money in the nation’s Highway Trust Fund, according to The Washington Post.
The reserve was created in 1975 at the urging of then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after an Arab oil of the early 1970s embargo choked off supplies to the United States.
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