Prez Biden flags move to release 50 mn oil barrels as major achievement

President Joe Biden has flagged as a major achievement of his administration the US-led move to release 50 million barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower energy costs for Americans

President Joe Biden has flagged as a major achievement of his administration the US-led move to release 50 million barrels of oil from the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower energy costs for Americans, a decision taken in coordination with other major economies like India and China.

In November last year, President Biden announced that the Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply.

"Now, with regard to the whole issue of energy prices, that gets a little more complicated. But you saw what happened when I was able to convince everyone from - including China, India - a number of other countries - to agree with us to go into their version of the - of their petroleum reserve to release more into the market so that - that brought down the price about 12, 15 cents a gallon in some places, some places more, Biden said on Wednesday during a press conference held at the White House to mark the first year of his presidency.

India had also announced on November 23 that it will release 5 million barrels of crude oil from its emergency stockpile in tandem with the US, China, Japan, and other major economies to cool international oil prices.

This was the first time ever that India, which stores 5.33 million tonnes or about 38 million barrels of crude oil in underground caverns at three locations on the east and west coast, decided to release stocks for such purposes.

The move came after the US made an unusual request to some of the world's largest oil-consuming nations, including China, India and Japan, to consider releasing crude stockpiles in a coordinated effort to lower global energy prices.

"As a result of President Biden's leadership and our diplomatic efforts, this release will be taken in parallel with other major energy consuming nations including China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom, the White House had said at the time.