WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday he has directed the Department of Energy to use all tools, including the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), to keep gasoline flowing in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
“It’s important to know that the region hit by it (Ida) is a key center of our nation’s oil production and refining infrastructure…that’s why we’re not waiting to assess the full impact of the storm,” Biden said.
The strategic reserve has four major storage facilities, two in Texas and two in Louisiana, to deliver crude to nearby refineries for fuel production. It was developed primarily to reduce disruptions to U.S. fuel supply during unusual events like hurricanes.
The storm cut through multiple regions of the United States, devastating parts of Louisiana. On Wednesday rains caused massive flooding in the U.S. Northeast.
Roughly 1.5 million barrels of daily offshore crude production is currently shut in, according to federal data from Wednesday. U.S. oil and gas companies, prevalent along the Gulf Coast, were straining to get operations working again due to lingering loss of electrical power and other problems related to storm damage.
Biden noted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved emergency fuel waivers for Louisiana and Mississippi to increase the availability of gasoline. The EPA issued the waivers this week, allowing winter-grade fuel to be sold out of season to avoid shortages.
The SPR had 621.3 million barrels of crude in stock as of last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, lowest since August 2003, the data showed.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Nandita Bose in Washington; additional reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by David Gregorio)
