Back in December, when Joe Biden announced that he was finally going to begin refilling the strategic petroleum reserve after he decimated it to try to lower gas prices before the election, I applauded his decision. (Even though it’s going to cost us a fortune compared to what we originally paid for the oil.) Of course, his enthusiasm for the project clearly didn’t last long since he rejected all of the bids to buy the oil to do so. But at least that was supposedly the new policy so we could start getting back on track. Or so we thought, anyway. We learned this week that the Biden administration now plans to sell another 26 million barrels of oil from the SPR beginning on April 1st (April Fools, y’all!), plunging the reserve further down to levels not seen since shortly after it was originally established. But this time, it’s not really Joe Biden’s fault, or at least not entirely. (Fox Business)

The Biden administration on Monday announced another sale of oil from the Energy Department’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), with 26 million barrels set to be delivered to the market from April 1 to June 30, which will take the number of barrels in the reserve to a new low dating back to 1983.

Unlike the largest-ever drawdown of the SPR that Biden announced in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the latest release of 26 million barrels is in response to a requirement included in two laws enacted by Congress during the Obama administration under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 and the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The announcement comes ahead of a potential uptick in gas prices as the U.S. nears the summer driving season.

This sale was mandated by Congress almost eight years ago under a plan developed by the Obama administration. That’s really convenient for Uncle Joe because he can simply shrug his shoulders and claim that the matter is out of his control. But even his own aides are admitting that he’s very much in favor of the plan because it will allow him to “front-load SPR barrels to avoid a summer gasoline price spike.” Biden doesn’t want to have to take the heat over another surge in gas prices, so this is once again all about the politics.

It doesn’t have to be this way, however. Congress created the law mandating this sale and they could just as easily repeal it. In fact, the House already passed a bill to prevent raiding the SPR except in cases of actual emergencies, not “political emergencies.” (Though Biden immediately threatened to veto it.) They could easily tack on the repeal of the 2015 sale mandate and send it to the Senate.

Of course, that assumes that any of the Democrats might go along with the measure and that Biden would stay true to his word about starting to refill the SPR. Do either of those things sound likely to you? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Then again, there may still be a ray of hope here. Members of Congress, including many Democrats, grew nervous about the diminishing supply left in the SPR last year. When the huge omnibus spending will was passed in December, it included a little-noted item that canceled additional sales of another 140 million barrels between 2024 and 2027. They just forgot to include the 2023 sale. So if that same coalition still exists in the Senate today, they might go along with it.

If the Democratic majority in the Senate passes such a measure, Biden will be hard-pressed to buck his own party and veto it. And if Schumer were to allow his veto to be overridden, that would be a major embarrassment. Either way, this could turn out to be very interesting. I just hope the future of the SPR doesn’t wind up being killed off for partisan political reasons.