Say Anything Blog

And no, that doesn’t mean what you think it means.

CHICAGO - Barack Obama is proposing tapping the nation’s strategic oil reserves to help drive down gasoline prices, his campaign said Monday.

Obama supports releasing light oil from the emergency oil stockpile now and replacing it later with heavier crude more suited to the country’s long-term needs, according to a campaign fact sheet. Light crude oil is easier to refine into gasoline than heavier oil.

As of right now the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has 707.2 million barrels of oil.  Even if we released all of that oil into the market (and really Obama is only talking about the 283.5 million barrels of sweet crude we have in storage) it would represent an approximately 28 day supply of oil for the country at current consumption levels (which hovers around 20 million barrels/day).

Twenty eight days.  That’s it.  And if we only released sweet crude, as Obama suggests, we’re looking at just 14 days.  Two weeks.

Would it mean a short-term drop in oil prices?  Sure.  But that’s it.  Once the reserves were depleted we’d be right back where we started.

It is interesting that Obama is at least recognizing here that putting more oil on the market will drive down prices.  One wonders why, if he understands this basic economic fact, he continues to blame “big oil” for gas prices instead of restrictions put on increasing the supply of domestic oil?  One also wonders why, if he’s truly interested in affordable energy for Americans, he doesn’t just support a more permanent increase in oil supply by calling for the expansion of domestic oil drilling?

Could it be that Obama is less interested in easing America’s pain at the gas pump and more interested in using energy problems as an excuse to expand government power?

That’s the only logical explanation, I think.