Biden announces use of US strategic reserves to lower oil prices

President Joe Biden announces that the Department of Energy will make available 50 million barrels of oil, coming from the US Strategic Reserves, to allow a lowering of consumer prices. The move, a White House note informs, was necessary to address the discrepancy between the demand coming from the economy emerging from the pandemic and the supply of crude oil. The recourse to stragic oil reserves, reports the White House, will be concerted with other “consumer” nations, including “China, India, Japan. South Korea and the United Kingdom”. The use of 50 million barrels from US strategic reserves will be articulated in two ways. Thirty-two million barrels will be used in the coming months, with recourse to quantities that will eventually be restored “in the next few years” to those destined for strategic reserves. For the other 18 million barrels it will instead be an acceleration of the sale of quantities already authorized by Congress.