The U.S. government issued a tender on Monday for the purchase of up to three million barrels of crude oil to replenish the U.S. strategic reserves, with delivery expected in August.
Bids are due until the end of May and the acquisition is expected to be completed by mid-June, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said in a statement. The US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, announced on Thursday that the United States intends to start replenishing its Strategic Petroleum Reserve(SPR) in the summer. Between September 2021 and January 2023, the U.S. government diverted some 250 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), or 40% of the total, in an attempt to relieve the price of black gold.
After officially halting its strategic reserve drawdown program in December, President Joe Biden’s administration pledged to replenish them and even issued an initial call for bids for three million barrels, which never came to fruition. At the end of March, Jennifer Granholm said that it would be “difficult” to start this process this year because of the need for maintenance work on several sites and because of a legal provision.
The latter, which resulted from a 2015 congressional vote, requires the U.S. government to sell an additional 26 million barrels between April and June of this year. RPDs are currently at their lowest level in nearly 40 years (October 1983). “We’ll be done in June, and at that time we’ll get going and look to buy” crude in the market, Jennifer Granholm explained Thursday at a hearing before the House Energy, Climate and Transmission Security Subcommittee.
