The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) can store up to 713.5 million barrels of crude oil. When Biden took office, the SPR held 570 million barrels. Then in March 2022 Biden’s announcement that he would release 1 million barrels a day from the SPR for six months (180 million barrels). Then in Oct he ordered an additional 15 million released.
As of Dec 23, 2022, the SPR was down to only 375 million barrels.
The price of oil (and gas) continued to climb for three months as around 90 million barrels were released from the petroleum reserves (some of which were sold to China). But in June 2022 prices did finally start to go down. However, after releasing more than 180 million barrels from the SPR prices are on their way back up again.
Instead of meeting with and talking to US oil producers about what can be done to increase production, Biden vilified US oil producers, blaming them for rising gas prices. Then he started calling other oil producing countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela), asked them to increase production and sell more oil to the US.
In October, Saudi Arabia announced that, despite US requests for increases in oil production, they would in fact be cutting production by 2 million barrels per day. The Biden administration then asked Saudi to wait until after the upcoming election to cut production, and in response Saudi Arabia released a public statement in which they said they would not delay production cuts “by one month” as the US requested.
Biden then immediately responded by threatening Saudi Arabia, saying there will be consequences for cutting production.
It’s worth pointing out that during his presidential campaign in 2020, Biden promised to turn Saudi Arabia into “the pariah that they are.” and referred to the Saudi royal family as having “very little social redeeming value”. With that in mind, it may not be surprising that Saudi Arabia not only refused Biden’s request to produce more oil, but decided to cut production and then embarrass Joe Biden by letting the world know his administration tried to influence the US mid-term election by requesting they delay production cuts until after the election.
In stark contrast, During the height of the pandemic in 2020, when oil prices dropped, President Donald Trump tried to purchase enough oil to bring the SPR back to max capacity. Unfortunately, Democrats blocked him.