PROVIDENCE – U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has joined five of his Senate colleagues to ask President Barack Obama to open the country’s strategic oil reserves in an effort to lower gasoline prices.
The senators said that selling from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would cut soaring prices at the pump and generate billions of dollars. That money, they said, could be used to pay for advances in electric vehicle development and pay down the federal deficit.
Opening the reserves “would immediately lower gasoline prices, generating significant revenue to invest in your call for 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” the senators wrote to Obama. “This would be a win-win for American consumers: short-term help at the pump, and long-term help in accessing cost-saving, oil-free electric cars.”
Gas prices in Rhode Island reached an average of $3.36 a gallon this week, according to AAA. The price represented the highest on record for any February.
Gasoline prices have been on the rise since October, largely because of oil traders’ belief that emerging economies – India, China and others – would be requiring more oil to meet their economic growth goals. Civil unrest in the oil-rich Middle East has also left oil traders on edge, although oil companies are more sanguine about their prospects.
“ExxonMobil reported a 53 percent increase in its fourth-quarter profit in 2010. Chevron reported fourth-quarter earnings 72 percent higher than last year, and ConocoPhillips reported 46 percent higher profits,” the senators wrote. “It should come as no surprise that as Americans are paying more at the pump, oil companies are once again reaping the benefit.”
The senators added that the spike in prices comes as the country faces an already difficult economic climate and persistently high unemployment rates.
The 727-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The country established the reserve in the aftermath of the 1973 to 1974 oil embargo.
The last time that the country released oil from the reserve was in 2008 in the wake of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the Department of Energy said.
