CHICAGO — On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced the US would be releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve to help county rising energy prices.
Other countries like Japan, the UK and India are also releasing from their reserves.
Patrick DeHaan with GasBuddy.com says the move is a little underwhelming, however. He says 32 of the 50 million US barrels are going to oil companies that will have to eventually return them.
The other 18 million barrels were scheduled to be released anyway. Now they're just being accelerated.
DeHaan says, "Having said that, there still will be some measure of relief in gas prices. In fact, in Grand Rapids, I did see already a couple of stations back under $3, which is very welcome. And part of the reason is that oil prices have been declining in the last week, expecting that this was imminent. So we can we can say at least part of the reason for the decline is because of President Biden's move."
American gas prices are at seven year highs. And, because of the pandemic, they've never increased at a faster year-to-year pace.
See our entire interview with DeHaan below:
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