The move, which the department said is intended to help “lower costs for American families and consumers,″ follows a mandate from Congress to sell off the 10-year-old Northeast reserve and then close it. The language was included in a spending deal Congress approved in March to avert a partial government shutdown.
The Executive branch is - wait for it - executing what the legislative branch mandated. Whether closing this reserve is a good thing or not is a whole other question, but one million barrels of gasoline is ... I have no idea how many gallons that is, because that's not how gasoline is measured. Crude oil is quantified in barrels, gasoline is quantified in gallons.
But let's say a barrel of gasoline is 42 gallons, like a barrel of crude oil is. That's a whopping 42 million gallons of gasoline. The entire US consumes 376 million gallons of gasoline each day, so that 42 million gallons, even if it were put on the market all at once, wouldn't last into the afternoon.
Also if it’s crude then it still has to be refined into gasoline. That’s the real bottle neck that causes price ripples if there isn’t enough refinery capacity.
I always feel bad for Presidents when they do this. It has zero effect on the supply at a high level or the cost at the pump. The reason they do it is so the news covers the Administration doing something and people see that coverage. The fact of the matter is that the President cannot meaningfully act in a manner that lowers the price of gas to consumers.
“By strategically releasing this reserve in between Memorial Day and July 4th, we are ensuring sufficient supply flows to the tri-state (area) and Northeast at a time hardworking Americans need it the most.”
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