The U.S. purchased 2.8 million barrels of crude for the nation’s emergency oil cache as it seeks to replenish depleted supplies.
The Energy Department has been slowly refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after it reached a 40-year-low following the Biden administration’s unprecedented drawdown in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, the Biden administration ordered the release of a record 180 million barrels from the emergency oil supply in the face of surging retail gasoline costs. Now, even as pump prices are back on the rise, the DOE has committed to refilling the cache, with the enormous storage caverns still sitting about half empty.
