Posted on 11/28/21
| News Source: Newsmax
The Biden administration last week authorized the release of a record 50 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but experts who spoke with Newsweek say the move is unlikely to help with lowering gasoline prices.
“One needs to be careful to directly equate a relatively minimal release of oil reserves to lower gasoline prices,” Philip Walsh, professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Ryerson University in Toronto and principal investigator at the university’s Center for Urban Energy, told Newsweek.
“First of all, 50 million barrels of oil is less than three days of consumption in the United States and the market for oil is not limited to producing just gasoline. Heating oil and oil-fired power generation will also compete for that surplus supply,” he said.
Gasoline prices, he added, “are influenced by oil prices which are driven by the demand-supply balance.”
“So any short-term impact on gasoline prices from the release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Reserve will be dependent on how quickly that oil gets into the U.S. energy system and at what daily amount,” he added.