A maze of crude oil pipe and equipment is seen with the American and Texas flags flying within the background on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Freeport, Texas.
Richard Carson | Reuters
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Friday geared toward limiting the president’s ability to attract down the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for any reason apart from a “severe energy supply disruption.”
The law is supposed to stop a repeat of President Joe Biden’s quite a few withdrawals from the SPR in 2022 that Republicans contend were intended to lower consumer gas prices ahead of the midterm elections
The bill passed on a near party-line vote, 221-205, after greater than six hours of individual House votes on various proposed amendments.
Titled the Strategic Production Response Act, the laws passed Friday would prohibit any latest drawdowns on the SPR until federal agencies had developed a plan to lease federal lands for oil and gas production “by the identical percentage as the share of petroleum … that’s to be drawn down,” in line with the bill’s text.
Despite passing the House, the laws is all but certain never to be signed into law. It lacks the support to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House has said Biden will veto it if it ever involves his desk.
Days before the vote, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a White House press briefing that the bill “would impose unnecessary, unhelpful restrictions on when the SPR will be used to assist provide supply.”
“It might not offer any tangible advantages to the American people,” Granholm told reporters. “As an alternative, it will interfere with our ability to be responsive during a world emergency … a natural disaster or a pipeline outage at home.”
The White House has long argued that the releases from the SPR previously 12 months were essential to offset the surge in pump prices sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But Republicans counter that the dimensions of the general 2022 release, 180 million barrels, was excessive, and that individual releases and announcements about future releases were timed for optimum political profit for Democrats.
Over the past 12 months, the overall oil within the reserve shrunk to about 380 million barrels, its lowest since 1984, raising concerns about energy security.
When Biden took office in 2021, the SPR contained 638 million barrels.
Friday’s laws marked the second time that the GOP-controlled House has passed a bill related to the SPR. The primary one prohibited the sale of petroleum reserves to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. It passed with bipartisan support.
Following Friday’s passage, the bill’s chief sponsor, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, applauded the vote.
“President Biden has turned a longtime bipartisan strategic asset, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, right into a political tool to cover up the results of his expensive rush-to-green agenda,” she said in an announcement.
The laws “provides a path towards making energy more cost-effective and reliable for Americans by preserving the SPR’s vital and central purpose — to offer the oil supplies Americans need during true emergencies, not drain them away for non-emergency, political purposes,” she added.
