President Joe Biden‘s detractors have criticized him for expanding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve beyond its original scope and beyond the use of previous presidents, which was as a tool to cope with abrupt oil supply disruptions.
He wouldn’t be the first one.
Congress, which created the SPR nearly five decades ago after Arab producers banded together to shut their oil off from the United States and its allies, has repeatedly tapped the reserve in recent years by directing the government to sell reserve oil for its own purposes, such as to raise revenue to pay for other priorities — including one set of sales that may not wrap up until 2031 (more on that below).
Here’s how Congress has used the SPR to raise money:
History of the reserves
Congress created the SPR, which consists of a pipeline network and a series of underground storage caverns in Louisiana and Texas, back in 1975.
It intended the reserves “to help prevent or mitigate a repetition of the economic disruption that the 1973 Arab embargo had caused,” according to the Congressional Research Service. In that instance, oil prices ballooned fourfold.
Congress defines the role of the SPR and the scope of the executive’s authority to direct drawdowns and sales of reserve oil. The president, under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act passed in 1975, may order emergency sales upon finding a “severe energy supply interruption.”
Congress later expanded presidential authority by permitting SPR drawdowns to prevent or reduce the impact of a severe domestic supply interruption.
Biden’s emergency sales this year add to three other such emergency releases: one during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, a second after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and a third following Libyan oil supply disruptions in 2011.
Federal law also permits the secretary of energy to carry out test sales to evaluate the SPR system’s procedures, as well as to carry out exchanges of oil between the reserves and refiners, which the Biden administration has done in one instance.
How Congress uses the SPR
Congress has directed the government to sell tens of millions of barrels from the reserve oil in recent years for nonemergency reasons, including to raise revenue for the Treasury, to support the upkeep of the reserves, and to fund reductions to the federal budget deficit.
For example, the 21st Century Cures Act, enacted in 2016, directed the secretary of energy to draw down and sell 25 million barrels of SPR crude oil over three consecutive fiscal years, beginning in fiscal 2017.
The Energy Department sold nearly 10 million barrels of crude oil for delivery in May and June of 2017, raising a total of $449.2 million for the Treasury, and the agency carried out sales covering the rest of the Cures Act barrels over the next two years, alongside SPR sales mandated separately in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.
The bipartisan infrastructure law, which became law in November 2021, directed the secretary of energy to draw down and sell 87.6 million barrels of SPR crude oil between fiscal years 2028 through 2031 and to deposit it in the Treasury.
As of April of this year, Congress has, since 2015, enacted eight laws mandating the sale of nearly 359 million barrels of oil from the SPR between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2031, according to the Congressional Research Service, 93 million of which have been sold.
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Where stocks stand
Mandated sales, in addition to emergency and other sales, have helped to drive the reserve’s levels down from their peak at around 727 million barrels in 2010 to the roughly 405 million barrels, and falling, in storage now.
In November 2021, when Biden announced his first release of SPR oil to tame high gasoline prices, SPR stocks stood at around 600 million barrels.
