Bush Adminstration Halts Petroleum Reserve Purchases

The purchases of crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) were halted on May 16 by the U.S. Department of Energy. About 13 million barrels of crudewould have been delivered to the underground salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas between July and December. It has been speculated that buying 76,000 barrels a day of crude oil for the reserve was needlessly adding to upward pressure on prices. The reserve currently has 703 million barrels, or enough to replace U.S. oil imports for 52 days. The SPR capacity is 727 million barrels, but the Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the president to expand it to 1 billion barrels.