Release Stategic Petroleum Reserve Supply
Less than a year ago — in June 2011 — the Obama Administration decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This amount was matched by 30 million barrels from the International Energy Agency members. The decision…
The SPR contains approximately 700 million barrels. A release of 10% of that amount, in concert with another action by the IEA, might not push crude to $90 or $95, but it could stop the move that has taken the price from about $94 to $110 in less that three months. To consumers and business that are threatened by $4 a gallon gasoline and higher prices for industrial oil and petrochemicals, the decision would say that the U.S. government will not stand idly by as concerns about Iran and a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz push WTI crude to $120 or higher.
How does a decision to release several tens of millions of barrels from the SPR hurt the White House? It is difficult to come up with a reason. The federal government has the money to replace the crude over time, even if the price is higher than the one that it paid to get the level of the reserve to where it is today.
If this is not the time to take a modest risk with the plan to bring down crude, when is?
Douglas A. McIntyre
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
