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President Bush is not just rejecting bipartisan calls to lower gas prices by cutting purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — he’s making the reserve bigger and filling it fuller than ever before.
Bush has filled the Gulf Coast salt caverns that house the reserve with 703 million barrels, about 97 percent of the reserve’s 727 million-barrel capacity. That’s the most the reserve has ever held, and it’s the largest emergency oil stockpile in the world.
Congress wants to turn off the nozzle, and the House and Senate are each expected to vote Tuesday on bills that would temporarily stop filling the reserve, sometimes referred to as America’s biggest gas tank.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the GOP’s presumptive flag-bearer in the presidential race, supports the move, as do both Democratic presidential candidates.
Bush has not offered a position on the bills, but opposes the concept of suspending deliveries. He has said that the amount of oil pumped into the reserve, 70,000 barrels a day, is so miniscule compared to global demand that it won’t affect oil prices.
“The president believes that we need an even larger Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to protect ourselves against oil shocks,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday. The White House has stopped short of a veto threat.
Still, because of Bush’s opposition, Democratic leaders are hoping for a veto-proof majority in both chambers. The House measure will be on the suspension calendar, which requires a two-thirds supermajority for passage.
Given McCain’s support, supporters said Bush might not veto it.
“I think it would be hard to vote against it,” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said of the Senate amendment, which is designed after a bill he authored.
In the past, Bush himself has said stopping deliveries would lower prices. In an April 2006 speech to ethanol producers, Bush announced he’d suspended deliveries to the reserve to lower prices that summer.
“One immediate way we can signal to people we’re serious about increasing supply is to stop making purchases or deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short period of time,” Bush said. “Every little bit helps.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has cited her own studies that say such a move would cut the price of gas by 5 to 24 cents.
The record 703 million barrels now in the reserve would fill the nation’s petroleum supply for 58 days.
The reserve’s previous record of 700 million barrels was reached shortly before Hurricane Katrina ripped into Mississippi and New Orleans. After the storm damaged pipelines and refineries, President Bush ordered 11 million gallons sold, and the reserve only recently got back to that level.
This month the reserve is expected to get 3.8 million barrels, according to records from the Department of Energy, which maintains the reserve. That’s the largest amount in the current August-to-June period for which records are kept.
The current size of the reserve is the result of decisions by President Bush and the previous Republican-controlled Congress.
The 2005 energy bill ordered the Department of Energy to expand the capacity of the reserve to 1 billion-barrels.
But that legislation said that the expansion should be done “without incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.”
Bush went further in January 2007, announcing plans to double the size of the reserve to 1.5 billion barrels.
At the time, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said his agency would be careful not to drive up prices.
“I want to assure the American public that we will acquire crude oil in a manner that does not adversely affect the market or raise gasoline prices. We will fill the reserve in a deliberate, predictable and transparent manner,” Bodman said.
In addition to the presidential candidates, lawmakers from both parties have supported the idea of ending deliveries to the reserve.
“I have resisted efforts in the past to put a freeze or a moratorium on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve investments, but I think today, at $120 a barrel, the time has come for us to have a moratorium,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said at a May 1 news conference.
The bills before the House and Senate Tuesday would temporarily suspend filling of the reserve until December unless prices dip below $75 a barrel.
Manu Raju contributed to this report. |
