In order to fight rising gas prices, an additional one million barrels of oil will be released per day from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months, the White House announced.
The Biden administration shared the plan in a press release and said that the release of the oil would help buffer the rising prices impacting domestic consumers forking over their paychecks to fill their tanks.
Along with the release, the White House is also encouraging oil companies to ramp up domestic production, which will help impact prices even more.
“The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time,” the White House said in a statement. “This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up.”
Gas has been at an all-time high for almost a month now, with the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States sitting at $4.22, according to AAA. That price was $3.60 last month and $2.90 last year.
The Biden administration took a shot at some companies on Thursday as well, claiming they are holding back domestic production.
“Right now, the oil and gas industry is sitting on more than 12 million acres of non-producing federal land with 9,000 unused but already-approved permits for production,” the White House said.
Biden could ask Congress to impose fees on firms that don’t use wells on federal land for production, according to the White House.
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Along with encouraging more domestic production of oil, Biden will also use the Defense Production Act to authorize support for the production of materials and minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries. The minerals needed include lithium, nickel, manganese, graphite, and cobalt.
Biden has been working to lower gas prices after announcing that the U.S. would cut off all Russian imports of oil for its invasion of Ukraine earlier this month.
Numerous European countries have expressed their support for the decision from Biden, but have not done the same due to their dependence on the Russian import.
Russia is the third-largest oil producer in the world, and the energy market has seen a skyrocket in prices due to the fears of a disruption of its supply to global markets.
Currently, it is not clear how the release of oil from the reserves will affect prices at the pump, especially now that the U.S. is no longer receiving the 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Russia.
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