Old North News

The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) has recently filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for refusing to disclose data linked to the Biden administration's release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), according to an FGI press release.

The Biden administration first announced it would utilize 50 million barrels of emergency crude oil from the SPR amid rising gas prices in November 2021, according to CNBC.

"With each release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we weaken our ability to respond to a legitimate supply crisis," FGI spokesman Peter McGinnis said on the FGI website.

Congress established the SPR during the early 1970s with the intention of maintaining a reserve to confront major supply shortages after the Arab oil embargo.

"The SPR was created to respond to real emergencies, a category that does not include falling poll numbers caused by a failed energy policy," McGinnis said on the FGI website. "Americans deserve to know if political motives are behind moves that put their security at risk."

However, according to the FGI, there has been no deficit of oil reserves that would have justified such a withdrawal. The FGI notes that the Colonial Pipeline hacking incident in May 2021, which delayed petroleum shipments to the East Coast, did not result in an SPR release.

The FGI maintains that its request was prompted due to concerns that the Biden administration's move to withdraw oil reserves was motivated by low approval ratings caused by increasing gas prices, instead of a supply shortage.

This year, the Biden administration has issued additional SPR releases in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. According to the FGI, these releases have reduced the U.S.'s oil reserves to their lowest level since the 1980s.

The FGI initiated an investigation of the Biden administration's intention to release the first 50 million barrels of SPR oil in January 2022. Despite the FGI's repeated attempts to collaborate with DOE throughout this inquiry, the department has not met its Freedom of Information Act requirements.

The FGI states that its transparency litigation is the only method to compel DOE to disclose documents that might show "the true basis for this unprecedented drawdown of the SPR.

Reuters reported that in May, the Biden administration delivered approximately 5 million barrels of oil from the SPR to Europe and Asia. Industry sources informed Reuters that shipments of SPR oil were also delivered to the Netherlands and a Reliance refinery in India, with a third shipment headed to China.

Phillips 66, the fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, has reportedly transported roughly 470,000 barrels of sour crude (a type of oil with high sulfur content) from the Big Hill SPR storage facility in Texas to Trieste, Italy, according to data from U.S. Customs.

The Gasoline Misery Index, which measures how much the average American consumer spends annually on gasoline, estimates that North Carolinians will pay $788 more for gasoline this year than last year.

In an attempt to lower high gas prices, Biden announced on March 31 that approximately 180 million barrels of crude oil would be released from the SPR over the course of six months. Biden claimed that the decrease in gas prices would be delayed by several days or weeks and that the extent of this decrease was "unclear."

"It could come down fairly significantly," Biden said in his speech. "It could come down [to] a better part of anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon. It’s unknown at this point.”