The Obama administration said it’s monitoring oil markets as prices fall to a three-year low, though there’s no immediate indication that the government will take advantage and add to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The reserve, kept in underground caverns along the Gulf Coast, contained 691 million barrels of oil as of Oct. 31, the Department of Energy said on its website. The capacity is 727 million barrels.
President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, said today he wasn’t aware of any discussions at the White House about using cheaper oil to bring the reserve to its maximum capacity.
West Texas Intermediate touched $75.84 a barrel, the lowest intraday price since Oct. 4, 2011 as Saudi Arabia price cuts deepened a selloff in crude. The drop has been a boon to U.S. consumers as the average retail price for a gallon of gasoline has fallen below $3 for the first time in almost four years.
Earnest said the White House is “regularly briefed on and even directly monitoring the global oil supply and its impact on demand.”
He directed questions about the reserve to the Energy Department, which declined to comment.
The reserve is maintained to compensate for disruptions in crude oil supplies. It last was filled to capacity at the end of 2009 and now contains the equivalent of 94-day supply of oil imports, according to the Energy Department.
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