US Makes Relatively Small Strategic Oil Reserve Draw While Planning More Releases

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States drew down a relatively-small 3.6 million barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday amid media reports that the Biden administration is to announce new releases to keep fuel prices low ahead of the November elections.

The SPR outflow for the week that ended on October 10 was about half of what the administration has typically drawn down for a week in a bid to flood the domestic market with crude supply and keep pump prices of gasoline low.

The price of gasoline at the pump in the United States reached a record high of $5 per gallon in mid-June but has come down since to an average price of below $4.

President Joe Biden has been criticized by rival Republicans who have accused him of risking the nation's emergency oil reserves to try and appease voters and defend his Democrats' control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Biden has said alleviating the hardship of Americans suffering from the worst inflation in 40 years, contributed significantly by high energy prices, is his top priority.

"It’s a sign of how concerned traders are about the economic outlook and how serious the Biden administration is about using the SPR to drive prices lower ahead of the midterm [elections]," Craig Erlam, analyst at online trading platform OANDA, said. "It's such a huge political issue in the US and could swing the midterms one way or another with the margins in the House and the Senate [being] so fine."

Since November 2021, more than 200 million barrels have left the nation's emergency oil stockpile, resulting in SPR balances standing at their lowest since 1984.

Media reports said Biden was slated to announce later on Wednesday the release of a further 15 million barrels from the reserve.