Biden releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from Northeast reserve in bid to lower prices at pump
Biden releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from Northeast reserve in bid to lower prices at pump
The Biden administration says it's releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from a Northeast reserve established after Superstorm Sandy in a bid to lower prices at the pump this summer
You're viewing a single thread.
The move, which the department said is intended to help “lower costs for American families and consumers,″ follows a mandate from Congress to sell off the 10-year-old Northeast reserve and then close it. The language was included in a spending deal Congress approved in March to avert a partial government shutdown.
The Executive branch is - wait for it - executing what the legislative branch mandated. Whether closing this reserve is a good thing or not is a whole other question, but one million barrels of gasoline is ... I have no idea how many gallons that is, because that's not how gasoline is measured. Crude oil is quantified in barrels, gasoline is quantified in gallons.
But let's say a barrel of gasoline is 42 gallons, like a barrel of crude oil is. That's a whopping 42 million gallons of gasoline. The entire US consumes 376 million gallons of gasoline each day, so that 42 million gallons, even if it were put on the market all at once, wouldn't last into the afternoon.
He’s also opened more reserves than any President in recent history, while big oil is producing record amounts, during a period of reduced demand.
The prices at the pumps are not controlled by the President, but regionally determined.
https://www.convenience.org/Media/conveniencecorner/Does-the-President-Control-Gas-Prices
Also if it’s crude then it still has to be refined into gasoline. That’s the real bottle neck that causes price ripples if there isn’t enough refinery capacity.