President Barack Obama’s chief of staff says the administration is looking at the nation’s oil reserves as it considers options for dealing with the spike in gas prices.
The price of a barrel of oil has passed $100. In the U.S., gasoline is averaging $3.50 a gallon.
Those increases come amid unrest in the oil-producing Middle East, particularly as rebellion rages in Libya.
“We’re looking at the options,” including drawing on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, William Daley said. “It is something that only is done — and has been done — in very rare occasions. There’s a bunch of factors that have to be looked at. And it is just not the price.”
He told NBC‘s “Meet the Press” that “all matters have to be on the table when … you see the difficulty coming out of this economic crisis we’re in and the fragility of it.”
The reserve contains 727 million barrels of oil.
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Online:
Strategic Petroleum Reserve: https://tinyurl.com/6h3h5v5
4 thoughts on “Obama may tap oil reserves to fight rising gas prices”
This is really dumb. How much would have to be released in order to even make a few cents difference in gas prices? All of it?
Here are a few better ideas…
Get the f**k out of the Middle East. Up until the 1950’s America was well respected and generally liked in the Middle East. Our government, via the CIA, was instrumental in overthrowing democratically elected governments in both Libya and Iran back in the 50’s Now we’re paying the price for our meddling.
Drill our own oil. Duh? ‘Nuf said.
Build nuclear power plants. We haven’t built a new nuclear power plant in forty years. China is building 50, having already completed 27. Technology has improved in the last half-century folks. No more meltdowns. It’s 2011 already.
End Wall Street speculation and allow the free market to set prices. There’s a novel idea. What say we give it a try?
Unbelievable.
With Bernanke’s seemingly endless QE program of counterfeiting evermore USD no wonder prices are going up regardless of any regional “oil crises” such as Libya. We only get 1% of our oil from that market with mostly Europe dependng on Libyan production.
Just as inflation is hitting various commodities other than oil, so too oil is going to become a moonshot as a function of ever cheaper dollars and if the oil producing nations dump the USD entirely as the accepted currency for transactions, then Americans best get used to paying $5.00 + per gallon and higher.
The problem with using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the puppets in D.C. were filling it up when oil was at $140 bbl during the Bush era. They were even chided for doing so. They weren’t buying any oil when it dropped to $40 post the 2008 crash in order to dollar cost average the high prices they paid during the ramp up.
So the taxpayers got clipped as usual with the money going into large speculators’ pockets such as hedge funds and the likes of Goldman Sachs et al. of the same stripe. Then their CDO scam went bust and oil cratered to $40 bbl as hedge funds were forced to unwind their positions due to a shortfall in cash to service redemptions. Now Obama & Co. comes up with the idea of moving an asset that cost taxpayers dearly into a market that is not yet at crisis proportions. They best not move until oil approaches or exceeds the $140 mark to hopefully break even and to cool off a truly superhot market, but not yet. Of course this will cause the stock market to chill and pull back, it too grossly overpriced in P/E valuations no differently than prior to the ‘tech wreck’ debacle, another engineered bubble courtesy of the Fed.
Citizens love to whine, unfortunately they are focusing their ire on that which seems simple; ie., a Libyan civil war when in effect the real cause is due to engineered inflation on the part of the Federal Reserve. If the Fed had let the financial evildoers fail as they should have with no QE followup nonsense, then oil would still be at $40-75 bbl range or so along with everything else still in a somewhat stable price pattern. Unfortunately the greedy one’s on Wall Street, hedge funds et. al. can’t make money in flat to stable markets. Better yet they can now make obscene profits using taxpayer money for which to speculate. It’s a win-win for them and as usual a lose-lose for “We the People”.
Citizensof the U.S. have been ripped off mightily in the past ten years via engineered wars, market manipulation as a functon of weak to non-existent oversight and regulation on the part of the government. We’re being led as lambs to slaughter by serial “Judas Goats in Chief” and their crimpol enablers in Congress. : |
Carl Nemo **==
Cave man,
find some new shoes.
Hoof it. …labolg..
STUPID POLITICS.
If I could say it louder I would.
Strategic Reserve… GET IT?
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