Did you know the United States holds 35,230,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2016, ranking 11th in the world and accounting for about 2.1% of the world’s total oil reserves of 1,650,585,140,000 barrels?
In fact, the United States has proven reserves equivalent to 4.9 times its annual consumption. This means that, without imports, there would be about five years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).
By comparison to these numbers, the Biden Administration has announced that the Department of Energy will release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). According to the White House, it is the largest release from the reserve in U.S. history. This is being done to presumably help reduce the high cost of gasoline that is impacting all U.S. consumers.
When he made his announcement, President Joe Biden noted that the Administration’s actions “will not solve the problem of high gas prices overnight.”
No it will not. In fact, it will not solve it at all. Consider that it is 50 million barrels (total) that are being released and that the U.S. uses 19.6 million barrels per day.
The SPR release of 50 million total barrels, is equal to just 2.55 days of US total fuel consumption. The President is right, the Administration’s actions “will not solve the problem…”
