Schumer once blocked Trump's move to fill the nation's oil reserves, now he wants them opened

[mystery-ak]

Schumer once blocked Trump's move to fill the nation's oil reserves, now he wants them opened
Schumer previously supported Biden's two SPR releases but blocked Trump's attempt to refill reserves during COVID-19 pandemic
By Alex Miller Fox News
Published March 9, 2026 1:22pm EDT

The top Senate Democrat wants President Donald Trump to tap the nation’s oil stockpile as fuel prices skyrocket, years after blocking his attempt to replenish the supply when prices were low.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Trump to unleash reserve barrels of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as oil prices spike amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Schumer argued in a statement that the reserve "exists for moments exactly like this."

"When wars and global crises disrupt energy markets, the United States has the ability to act, but President Trump and his administration are refusing to do so," Schumer said. "Trump should release oil from the SPR now to stabilize markets, bring prices down, and stop the price shock that American families are already feeling thanks to his reckless war."

During his first term, Trump wanted to use about $3 billion from a colossal COVID-19 stimulus package making its way through Congress to fill the reserve, but the move was promptly rejected by Schumer and congressional Democrats, who panned it as a "bailout" for the oil industry.

The price per barrel at the time was roughly $29, according to WTI Crude Oil. Now, oil has eclipsed $110 per barrel over the weekend for the first time since 2022.

Though the SPR has capacity for over 700 million barrels of crude oil, the reserve currently has far less.

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-once-blocked-trumps-move-fill-nations-oil-reserves-now-he-wants-them-opened

[Smokin Joe]

No to tapping the reserves for naval and other military operations. The greatest whinging is coming from California, which has enacted policies and levels of taxation which make fuel there more expensive than the rest of the lower 48.
Yes, it has gone up, which is no surprise with war in the Middle East.
What surprises me, though, is that Bakken Crude (North Dakota Sweet) has barely moved. Considering we export light, sweet crude (most domestic refineries are set up to handle heavy crude), I'm surprised only WTI seems affected (perhaps because of proximity to export platforms). We import less than 10% of our oil from the Middle East. China is most reliant on the (Persian) Gulf region, importing 40% of its crude from there, and 90% of Iran's production.
This may well be a short term spike, and primarily driven at the trading pits as far as the US is concerned.

[DefiantMassRINO]

[Smokin Joe]

I distinctly recall Trump's offer to oil companies and others holding futures that actually went negative in the early days of COVID. Prices crashed because no one was using fuel, and the storage at refineries was filled. Those left holding futures contracts (10,000 bbl of crude oil) had no place for it to go and for a couple of days were willing to pay people to take delivery on the oil.
The crash in the oil markets was profound, drilling programs were suspended after the current well was drilled, and the upstream end of the industry came to an unprecedented standstill. (Here, for the first time since oil had been discovered in the early 1950s, there were NO rigs drilling.)
Trump's brilliant (business) solution was to allow oil to be stored in the SPR, with the terms being that when that oil was recovered, 10% of it would be left as an in-kind storage fee. Literally, adding oil to the SPR for handling costs. Oil prices recovered to positive territory after the trading pit panic as a result.

That's what Schumer stopped.

Chuckie can suck eggs, as far as I am concerned. He has always put playing politics ahead of the welfare of these United States.

Prices remained low, and wells producing a total of some 1.2 million barrels of oil per day that was contributed by stripper production (wells producing under 20 barrels of oil per day) were plugged and abandoned, because operating costs were far too high to be supported by oil prices (and no one knew how long COVID would last). That production is lost to the market, as redrilling and completion costs would far outstrip and profit to be had. Had the SPR been opened for storage (and prices recovered sooner), many of those wells might not have been P&A'd and that oil would have been available to the market.

Couple that with Biden killing the Keystone XL Pipeline (on day one, by Executive Order), and the 800,000 barrels of Canadian heavy crude that could have been coming into the US in that pipeline did not, leading to some of the highest gas prices in our history.

But the Democrats want desperately to blame Trump for the mess they made.