The Worst Possible Way

The Trump Admin. has announced a 172 million barrel release from the SPR. What is largely unknown is that this is not a sale; this is an exchange. An exchange is when we loan refiners oil from the SPR to be repaid later. Exchanges are for small regional shortages and not meant to impact global oil prices. This strategy is going to cost Americans billions of dollars. A sale realizes all the profit from the SPR and the flexibility to repurchase 286 million more barrels. The exchange only gives us back 200 million barrels. It allows oil companies to make over 8 billion dollars on loaned oil, in addition to capturing another 5.2 billion in arbitrage that we are giving up. All because he doesn’t want to do what Biden did.