U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the release of 172 million barrels of oil from the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve on Wednesday, after oil prices rocketed to their highest levels in years amid the U.S.’s war with Iran, CBS News reported.
The releases will start next week and take about 120 days, Energy Secretary Christopher Wright said Wednesday in a statement.
The move is part of a coordinated release by the International Energy Agency, whose 32 member countries — mostly U.S. allies — announced earlier Wednesday they would let 400 million barrels of oil flow out of their emergency reserves.
Wright said the U.S. plans to replenish the reserve with 200 million barrels of oil “within the next year.”
CBS News quoted Trump as saying at a press briefing that after the reserve is tapped, “we’ll fill it up.”
The benchmark U.S. crude oil price, West Texas Intermediate, was trading at just over $92 per barrel as of Wednesday evening at 8:15 p.m. ET. Prices had climbed about 7.2% over the course of the day and were largely unchanged following the announcement of a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release, which was widely expected, according to CBS News.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve — stored in massive underground caverns in Texas and Louisiana — held about 415 million barrels as of last week, CBS News reported citing government figures. In total, the IEA says its members have more than 1.2 billion barrels in their reserves.
Published by Armenpress, original at
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