The White House announced on Thursday that US President Joe Biden has decided to release the largest amount of oil from strategic reserves in response to rising energy prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.
Read the latest information about the Ukraine war here
180 million barrels of oil from US strategic reserves will be released to the market in the coming months.
“The release of this record will provide a historic supply to serve as a bridge to the end of the year as domestic production increases,” the White House said in a statement. Unprecedented “.
Oil prices fell on Thursday, with reports coming in Wednesday night that such action was imminent.
Brent crude for May fell 4% to $ 108.89 a barrel. US WTI crude oil futures fell 4.7 percent to $ 102.84 a barrel. News.ro..
Joe Biden Report:
The most important statements of the President of the United States:
– It is a good thing that we have stopped importing Russian energy, but it comes at a cost. We need to grow the industry so that oil production can increase. We want to increase crude oil production by one million barrels a day. But some companies do not want to increase production. They want to take advantage. I say: enough. These companies made a profit of nearly $ 80 million last year. This is not the time to make a profit, but to engage in the good of the country. To increase production.
– The reason is Putin’s war. Now many people around the world are stopping buying Russian oil. We have banned Russia’s oil imports from the United States. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have called for and supported this. That is the right thing to do. But I said right away that it would cost money. As Russian oil exits the world market, oil supplies will fall and prices will rise. Now Putin’s price rise has hit Americans hard
-It’s time to give the United States long-term energy independence. We are the only country that has turned every crisis into an opportunity.
-Vladimir Putin seems to be isolating himself, and there are reports that he has fired some of his advisers or placed them under house arrest, but I do not want to give credibility to these things because I have no conclusive evidence.
Joe Biden said he was skeptical of reports of Russian troops retreating around Kiev.
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Although the United States has freed tens of thousands of oil from strategic reserves, the scale of the intervention has never been greater, including mitigating the impact of supply disruptions, reducing the trade deficit and cutting budget spending.
Kevin Books, director of ClearView Energy Partners, said: “The scale of this intervention is difficult to underestimate.
Data released by the U.S. Department of Energy show that as of March 25, there are 568 million barrels of oil in US strategic oil reserves.
In parallel, the Washington administration will ask the International Energy Agency to coordinate the release of oil from the strategic reserves of other major consuming states. According to Bloomberg sources, the International Energy Agency will hold a meeting in the coming days and the White House expects other IEA member states to withdraw oil from their strategic reserves.
However, US efforts will not be accompanied by an increase in OPEC + production. They decided on Thursday to ignore demands for a significant increase in production to ease price pressures. At a meeting in Vienna, representatives of the 13 member states of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and 10 allied countries, led by Russia, met under the umbrella of OPEC + and agreed to pursue a strategy of gradually increasing oil production.
Although the price of a barrel of oil reached a record high on March 7, OPEC + wants to maintain its current level of over $ 130. Meanwhile, quotes have dropped further, but remain above the $ 100 limit.
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