Biden Releases 15 million barrels of America’s SPR’s oil

President Joe Biden announced a plan on Wednesday to sell off 15 million barrels of American crude oil from the emergency supply and begin refilling the reserve as he tries to contain high fuel prices ahead of midterm elections scheduled on November 8.

Biden’s decision came two weeks after the OPEC+ organization annoyed Biden by agreeing to a production cut, raising fears a of a new spike in US pump prices.

“With my announcement today, we’re going to continue to stabilize markets and decrease the prices at a time when the actions of other countries have caused such volatility,” Biden said at a White House event.

Biden blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for higher crude and fuel prices, while noting prices had fallen 30% from their peak earlier this year. But prices “are not falling fast enough,” he said.