London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 17, 2025

Biden releasing one million barrels of oil per day to cool prices

Biden releasing one million barrels of oil per day to cool prices

Barrels will come from US’s strategic petroleum reserve, as Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent prices skyrocketing.

US President Joe Biden has ordered the release of up to one million barrels of oil per day from the United States’ strategic petroleum reserve, as it moves to lessen the impact of rising gas prices amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The US and other nations have barred imports of Russian oil and gas over the country’s ongoing invasion of its neighbour, while European countries have pledged to wean themselves off energy supplies from Moscow.

“Today I’m authorising the release of one million barrels per day for the next six months – over 180 million barrels,” Biden told reporters from the White House on Thursday afternoon.

“This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply until production ramps up later this year. And it is by far the largest release from our national reserve in our history.”


Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington ahead of Biden’s news conference, said the US president is seeking to lessen the impact of the Ukraine war on American consumers, as the price of gas has surged in the country over the past year.

“This is having an immense political impact on President Biden, who is eyeing those midterm elections later this year,” Hanna said.

“This release of the stockpile could have the consequence of relieving gas prices within the United States, of adding to the global stockpile, of reducing the price of oil, which has been soaring in terms of the shortages that have occurred in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Biden also called on US oil producers to prioritise increasing production over profiting from the crisis in Ukraine. “If we want lower gas prices, we need to have more oil supply right now,” he told reporters.

“But some companies have been blind,” Biden added. “I say enough. Enough of lavishing excessive profits on investors with payouts and buybacks. The American people are watching, the world is watching. US oil companies made nearly $80 billion in profit last year.”

Gradual release


The Biden administration in November announced the release of 50 million barrels from the strategic reserve in coordination with other countries.

And after the war in Ukraine began in late February, the US and 30 other countries agreed to an additional release of 60 million barrels from reserves, with half of the total coming from the US.

The strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) is a complex of four sites with deep underground storage caverns created in salt domes along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts, the US Energy Department said on its website. The reserve currently holds about 586 million barrels.

Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital markets in New York, said in a note to clients on Thursday that the Biden administration’s move would be “the single-largest SPR release in history”.


The Biden administration has been asking other oil-producing nations to increase output but OPEC+ is sticking to its agreed production limits for now, Croft said in the note.

“The leadership of the [United Arab Emirates] and Saudi Arabia seem reluctant at this stage to take additional action as they seek more fulsome security guarantees from Washington and have expressed concern about using the remaining spare capacity given the uncertainty around the true magnitude of Russian export disruptions,” Croft said.

Effect on prices


Clayton Allen, director at the Eurasia Group, said in a separate note to clients that “OPEC’s unwillingness to add volume to the market may limit the price impacts of this release” by the Biden administration.

“Continued geopolitical risk will keep upward pressure on prices and SPR volumes will not offset the full extent of supply dislocations,” Allen said. “The size and duration of this potential release will put tremendous pressure on SPR infrastructure and the terminals that will be used to move oil onto the market.”

Robert McNally, president of the Rapidan Energy Group, a Washington-based consultancy, told Al Jazeera that he believed the short-term impact of the release would knock crude prices down by as much as $5 a barrel.

“I don’t think it’s going to arrest the upward move in crude oil prices, because the volumes we’re talking about from the SPR – even if the Europeans and Japanese throw in some barrels tomorrow – are more than offset by disruption risk coming from Russia,” he said.


“What they’re trying to do here is to is to reassure the market that there will be at least some offset to the prospective loss of Russian supply,” McNally added. “I don’t think it means we’re going back below $100 a barrel.”

Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera in an email that while the SPR release “could provide some near-term relief, it is not a long-term solution to meeting growing demand for affordable and reliable energy”.

“Instead of managing from crisis to crisis, we should be focused on promoting policies that avoid them altogether through increased production of our nation’s domestic energy resources,” he said.

On that point, the White House said in a statement earlier on Thursday that Biden is calling on US lawmakers “to make companies pay fees on wells from their leases that they haven’t used in years and on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing”.

It said the industry is sitting on more than 12 million acres (4.85 million hectares) of federal land with 9,000 permits, and would “have to choose whether to start producing or pay a fee for each idled well and unused acre”.

But environmentalists and others have cautioned that the war in Ukraine should not be used as a pretext to increase production to displace Russian energy supplies – and worsen the climate crisis. Instead, they are urging nations to move towards more renewable forms of energy.

Comments

Oh ya 4 year ago
So like explaining on the article slow joe is really just peeing into the wind. $5 a barrel will not lower the price you pay at the pump. Buy a small motorcycle if weather permits and enjoy some fresh air. Bet you hate that Ford F150 every time you put $175 in the tank

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Yachts, Private Jets, and a Picasso Painting: Exposed as 'One of the Largest Frauds in History'
Australia’s Wedgetail Spies Aid NATO Response as Russian MiGs Breach Estonian Airspace
McGowan Urges Chalmers to Cut Spending Over Tax Hike to Close $20 Billion Budget Gap
Victoria Orders Review of Transgender Prison Placement Amid Safety Concerns for Female Inmates
U.S. Treasury Mobilises New $20 Billion Debt Facility to Stabilise Argentina
French Business Leaders Decry Budget as Macron’s Pro-Enterprise Promise Undermined
Trump Claims Modi Pledged India Would End Russian Oil Imports Amid U.S. Tariff Pressure
Surging AI Startup Valuations Fuel Bubble Concerns Among Top Investors
Australian Punter Archie Wilson Tears Up During Nebraska Press Conference, Sparking Conversation on Male Vulnerability
Australia Confirms U.S. Access to Upgraded Submarine Shipyard Under AUKUS Deal
“Firepower” Promised for Ukraine as NATO Ministers Meet — But U.S. Tomahawks Remain Undecided
Brands Confront New Dilemma as Extremists Adopt Fashion Labels
The Sydney Sweeney and Jeans Storm: “The Outcome Surpassed Our Wildest Dreams”
Erika Kirk Delivers Moving Tribute at White House as Trump Awards Charlie Presidential Medal of Freedom
British Food Influencer ‘Big John’ Detained in Australia After Visa Dispute
ScamBodia: The Chinese Fraud Empire Shielded by Cambodia’s Ruling Elite
French PM Suspends Macron’s Pension Reform Until After 2027 in Bid to Stabilize Government
Orange, Bouygues and Free Make €17 Billion Bid for Drahi’s Altice France Telecom Assets
Dutch Government Seizes Chipmaker After U.S. Presses for Removal of Chinese CEO
Bessent Accuses China of Dragging Down Global Economy Amid New Trade Curbs
U.S. Revokes Visas of Foreign Nationals Who ‘Celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
AI and Cybersecurity at Forefront as GITEX Global 2025 Kicks Off in Dubai
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
×