The Trump administration announced Friday it has begun delivering crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a global drawdown, awarding contracts to eight companies to receive more than 45 million barrels from U.S. reserves.
The administration’s decision to lend from its crude stockpile is part of a coordinated global releasethat’s intended to tackle oil market disruptions tied to the ongoing Middle East war, which began in late February and has pushed global energy prices skyward. The exchange from the U. S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has advanced at “record speeds,” the Department of Energy said in a news release Friday, though the total amount is less than the 86 million barrels the DOE made available for exchange in an initial tranche.
The administration’s oil exchange will bring in an additional 10 million barrels to the country’s crude stockpile “at no cost to taxpayers” when those volumes are returned, Kyle Haustveit, assistant secretary of DOE’s hydrocarbons and geothermal energy office, said in a statement.
“This exchange not only maintains reliability in the current market but will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in value in the form of additional barrels for the American people when the barrels are returned,” Haustveit said in the same statement.
