To keep gas prices low before the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has mortgaged the country’s security and undermined his administration’s climate change goals. Drawing down the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve may go down as one of the worst, and most cynical, decisions of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve aims to ensure ample supplies of the economically and militarily essential resource in case of a major crisis. Drawing it down to 50% capacity to keep a lid on gas prices until early November has significantly reduced the country’s ability to pressure OPEC+, as well as prepare for a wider escalation of the war in Ukraine.
The hard truth is Mr. Biden has used one of America’s best bargaining chips and strategic stockpiles to prop up his party’s polling numbers. The timeframe of the 180-day, one-million-barrel-a-day drawdown, announced by Mr. Biden in late March, dovetails, not coincidentally, with the midterm election campaigns. Still, OPEC+ cuts could quickly raise prices at the pump.
With the OPEC+ move to cut crude production by two million barrels a day, the United States faces a dangerous dilemma. After Mr. Biden’s drawdowns — at 260 million barrels, by far the largest in the reserve’s nearly 50-year history — the United States has less crude stockpiled than at any time since the mid-80s. And it’s still dropping, soon below 400 million barrels and approaching 50% of the reserve’s capacity, or only two to three weeks of the country’s daily usage.
Following the 180-day drawdown, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can’t rest at 50%. The Biden administration will have a moral and strategic responsibility to replenish it, undercutting its climate goals by increasing the domestic production of oil.
Expanding domestic production will also be an economic necessity. The end of the drawdown will withdraw one million barrels a day — about 5% of the country’s usage — from the market. Replenishing the reserve will withdraw more. On top of the OPEC+ cuts, that’s more than three million barrels a day off the world markets. That would spike American gas and energy prices without boosting the domestic supply of oil.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting shocks to the international energy market, demanded a response, Mr. Biden’s politically-timed drawdowns far exceeded what was needed. For now, Mr. Biden’s shortsighted and reckless strategy may alleviate economic anxieties and lift the campaigns of Democratic candidates. But all Americans will pay the price after the election — and maybe before that.
First Published: October 7, 2022, 8:03 p.m.