New York (awp/afp) – The US government on Monday launched a tender for the purchase of volumes of up to three million barrels of crude oil, intended to replenish the strategic reserves of the United States, with delivery expected in August.
The offers are to be filed until the end of May and the acquisition must be finalized in mid-June, the US Department of Energy (DOE) said in a press release.
The US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, had announced on Thursday the intention of the United States to begin to reconstitute, in the summer, their strategic reserves (SPR).
Between September 2021 and January 2023, the US government withdrew some 250 million barrels from strategic reserves (SPR), or 40% of the total, in an attempt to relieve the price of black gold.
After officially interrupting its program to draw down strategic reserves, in December, President Joe Biden’s government pledged to replenish them and even launched a first call for tenders for three million barrels, which never came to fruition. .
At the end of March, Jennifer Granholm had declared that it was going to be “difficult” to start this process this year, because of the need to carry out maintenance work on several sites but also because of a legal provision.
The latter, which resulted from a vote by Congress in 2015, obliges the US government to sell an additional 26 million barrels between April and June of this year.
SPRs are currently at their lowest level in almost 40 years (October 1983).
“We will be done in June and, on that date, we will start and seek to buy” crude on the market, explained Thursday Jennifer Granholm, during a hearing before the subcommittee of the House of Representatives. dedicated to Energy, the climate and the security of electricity transmission networks.
afp/rp
2023-05-15 21:46:03
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