U.S. To Buy 3 Million Barrels for The SPR, But There’s A Problem

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is seeking to purchase 3 million barrels of crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the latest in a string of contracts aimed at refilling emergency inventories following a record release of 180 million barrels in 2022. The DoE has since repurchased over 56 million barrels at an average price of around $76/barrel, considerably lower than its sale price of $95/barrel. The DoE has also worked with Congress to cancel a previously planned sale of 140 million barrels of oil from the reserve, also counting…