President Biden caused $100 million in damage to the infrastructure that stores the nation’s emergency crude oil supply when he ordered nearly 180 million barrels to be sold for lower energy prices ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, said Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Mr. Wright said taxpayers will have to foot the bill for more than $100 million in repairs to the facilities that store and distribute the emergency oil.
“They flooded the market with oil, reduced the price of oil in the short term, but at the cost of U.S. strategic positioning and they damaged the facilities in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by draining them so fast,” Mr. Wright told Glenn Beck on Blaze TV.
An Energy Department spokesman did not respond immediately to an inquiry about the specific damages.
Mr. Wright and other critics of the SPR drainage by Mr. Biden say the former president sold off nearly half of the SPR for political reasons.
“In 2022, coming into those midterm elections, the Democrats saw inflation was a problem. Things weren’t going well for them, and they drained nearly half of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make those midterm elections go well for them,” Mr. Wright said.
As of May 2, the SPR holds 399 million barrels of crude oil, far below its authorized capacity of 715 million barrels.
Mr. Biden sold off hundreds of millions of barrels of oil after Russia invaded Ukraine, causing already rising gas prices to spike even higher.
While various presidents have tapped the SPR since its creation in the 1970s, Mr. Biden’s sale was the largest in history.
The SPR, Mr. Wright said, “wasn’t built for” rapid draining.
“And by design, it’s much slower to fill it than to drain it,” he added.
The Biden administration sold off roughly 206 million barrels of oil from the SPR between 2021 and 2023.
Mr. Biden announced the release of 180 million barrels of oil from the SPR in March 2022.
He said it was a necessary response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which hurt the world’s oil supply.
“Your family budgets to fill a tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war,” Mr. Biden said at the time.
Economists credited the SPR sale with helping lower gas prices, which had topped $5 a gallon in many states.
Democrats fended off an anticipated red wave in the November 2022 midterms, keeping control of the Senate and barely losing House seats, although Mr. Biden’s party remained in the minority in the lower chamber.
The Biden administration replenished the SPR by nearly 60 million barrels before the president’s term ended, but it remains at the lowest level in decades.
According to the Energy Department, the federal government’s emergency oil supply is stored in massive underground salt caverns at four sites along the Gulf Coast.
The size of the SPR is meant to deter oil import cutoffs and provide leverage in foreign policy.
“This isn’t for timing markets or filling it or unfilling it. It’s for when a very bad day happens,” Mr. Wright said. “The world literally runs on oil. If you don’t have oil, you’re screwed in everything you do — economics, defense, health care, anything. We created a strategic petroleum reserve for that very rainy day.”
