Timely: The website was last updated in May of 2012, so the information is very relevant to the problems that we are currently facing.
The SPR or Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a emergency oil storage facility that was built after the oil embargo of the mid 1970's. It was built for the reason that if there were ever an emergency and oil was scarce, we would have our own oil to last for a short period of time. Currently, as of November 2nd, the SPR holds 695 million barrels of oil. At our current rate of consumption, this would only equate to about 36 days worth of fuel. But that is not possible due to a cap that is put on the reserves which only allows a max of 4.4 million barrels of oil be released a day which extends that to 160+ days.
If we were to release the max that the SPR could release, It would be approximate one fifth of our oil consumption a day, about 20 million barrels a day. Imagine what that could do to the prices of gas that we are facing today. If a fifth of our oil came from our own government, we would likely see a drop in gas prices of roughly 25 cents. That may not seem like a lot but on a 20 gallon car that is $5 that you are saving every time that you fill up. It doesn't even have to be 4.4 million barrels, it could be even half of that or even one fourth. The quantity of oil isn't the issue, the issue is the gas prices that the american are suffering from and the government not doing much to change it.
In mid 2011, president Obama decided to open up and release oil form the oil reserves. We found out that within a 2 week period gas prices dropped a staggering 15 cents. Imagine what that could do over 6 months? What many people are afraid of is that the oil reserves could run out. The fact of the matter is that america alone sits atop 2.3 trillion barrels of oil. So naturally those reserves will fill back up again with oil. My question is, Why are we not continuing to release oil from our reserves when we have proof that it lowered prices?
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