Analysis: Biden's record strategic oil reserve sales have led to higher, not lower, gas prices

President Joe Biden's record-level sales of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), intended to lower consumer gasoline prices, so far have had the opposite effect.

That's according to a Houston Daily analysis of SPR sales and gasoline prices.

Since January, Biden has sold 177 million barrels of oil, intending to create more gasoline supply. But prices have actually risen by $0.50 per gallon over the period.

The average gas price in Jan. 2022 was $3.28 per gallon. At the end of Sept. 2022 it was $3.78 per gallon.

On March 31, three months after he started the SPR sales, Biden announced that a "historic release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" was part of his strategy to lower gas prices.

"The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time. This record release will provide a historic amount of supply," Biden said.

But gasoline prices haven't fallen. In fact, they rose as high as $4.77 per gallon in June, the month when Biden's SPR sales for the year surpassed a then-record 100 million barrels.

All told, President Biden has sold 222 million barrels of oil since taking office, effectively 70 percent of all SPR sales since the program's inception in 1975, 47 years ago.

Only 318 million barrels of oil have been sold from the SPR by the seven U.S. Presidents in office during its existence.

Before Biden's sales spree, the previous record was held by President Barack Obama, who sold 36 million barrels of oil over eight years, one-sixth of what Biden has sold in less than two years holding the White House.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created as a response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Congress sought to protect the U.S. from another oil shock by stockpiling oil for “emergency” use.

The Reserve stores oil in four locations, two in Louisiana and two in Texas. They are the Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve near Freeport in Brazoria County, 65 miles south of Houston, and the Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in Jefferson County, 30 miles south of Beaumont.

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Record Strategic Petroleum Reserve Sales, Record Gas Price Hikes

So far, President Biden's unprecedented draining of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has led to higher gasoline prices, not lower ones.

Month	SPR Start	SPR End	Change	Gas Price Start	Gas Price End	Change
January	593,382	587,515	-5,867	$3.28	$3.37	$0.09
February	587,515	577,496	-10,019	$3.37	$3.61	$0.24
March	577,496	560,681	-16,815	$3.61	$4.17	$0.56
April	560,681	542,994	-17,687	$4.17	$4.18	$0.01
May	542,994	519,323	-23,671	$4.18	$4.62	$0.44
June	519,323	485,147	-34,176	$4.62	$4.77	$0.15
July	485,147	464,558	-20,589	$4.77	$4.19	-$0.58
Aug	464,558	434,057	-30,501	$4.19	$3.75	-$0.45
Sept	434,057	416,389	-17,668	$3.75	$3.78	$0.04
TOTALS			-176,993			$0.50

Source: U.S. Department of Energy / SPR totals are in millions.

Why have U.S. Presidents sold oil from the SPR previously?

President Biden has sold 222 million barrels of oil since Jan. 2021, more than twice as much as every other U.S. President combined.

Date	President	Reason	Millions of Barrels Sold
Nov. 1985	Reagan (R)	Test Sale	1
Sep. 1990	H.W. Bush (R)	Desert Shield Test Sale	4
Jan. 1991	H.W. Bush (R)	Desert Storm	17
Jan. 1996	Clinton (D)	Weeks Island Storage Decommissioning	5
April 1996	Clinton (D)	Budget Deficit Reduction	13
Oct. 1996	Clinton (D)	Budget Deficit Reduction	10
Sept. 2005	Bush (R)	Hurricane Katrina	11
June. 2011	Obama (D)	Libya Production Curtailment	31
Mar 2014	Obama (D)	Test Sale	5
Mar 2022	Biden (D)	High gasoline prices	222
		TOTAL	318

By Presidency	Millions of Barrels Sold	%
Reagan (R)	1	0%
H.W. Bush (R)	21	7%
Clinton (D)	28	9%
Bush (R)	11	3%
Obama (D)	36	11%
Trump (R)	0	0%
Biden (D)	222	70%

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy