SPR call: Massachusetts Democrat Representative Edward Markey
Lawmaker asks Bush to tap SPR
Amid record crude and heating oil prices, Massachusetts Democratic Representative Edward Markey today called on the Bush administration to release supplies from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and the Northeast Heating Oil Reserve.
In a letter to President George W. Bush, Markey said tapping into both reserves would be "a short-term emergency measure" to put much-needed oil and heating fuel supplies on the market as the cold winter months approach and also help curb petroleum prices.
"Your willingness to deploy these reserves to break runaway oil prices would send a powerful signal to speculators and the world oil markets that has been missing from previous oil price events," wrote Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.
The crude stockpile, created by Congress after the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo, now holds 694 million barrels of crude at four underground storage sites in Texas and Louisiana. The 2 million-barrel heating oil reserve is located in the Northeast, where about one-third of the households in the region use the fuel as their main heating source.
Markey, who is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, is the first lawmaker to call for the reserves to be used to boost available supplies this winter and cut prices.
The retail cost for home heating oil reached a record $2.95 a gallon this week and US crude oil hit a fresh high of $96.24 a barrel.
Markey said the record prices create "a crisis in which many families will not be able to afford to heat their homes and others will be forced to make enormous sacrifices in order to pay skyrocketing home heating bills".
Other lawmakers have recently urged the administration to delay adding oil from the petroleum reserve in order to keep more supplies on the market at a time of record crude prices.
The Bush administration has repeatedly said it would use both reserves only to offset major supply disruptions and not to lower crude and petroleum product prices.
Vice President Dick Cheney recently said the role of the emergency crude oil stockpile is "to deal with an interruption of supply" and not "to try to manage prices".