Power Secretary Jennifer Granholm was left scrambling Tuesday to clarify the constructive impression of releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — admitting at one level she had no concept what number of barrels are utilized by Individuals every day.
“I’m curious if you know, how many barrels of oil does the US consume per day?” CBS Information reporter Ed O’Keefe requested Granholm throughout the White Home briefing.
“I don’t have that number in front of me, sorry,” Granholm replied.
“Some suggest it’s about 18 million,” O’Keefe responded, “which would suggest you are releasing less than three days’ supply from the petroleum reserve. Why is that enough?”
In keeping with the federal Power Data Administration — a part of Granholm’s personal division — Individuals used a mean of 20.7 million barrels a day throughout September, which means that Tuesday’s launch equals about two and a half days of extra provide.
Granholm defended the discharge as a “short-term strategy” that will provide a “bridge” to decrease costs — and referred to as on US oil corporations to do extra home drilling, regardless of President Biden’s actions to shut down oil pipelines and scrap new oil leases amid what he calls a “climate crisis.”
“We have 250 fewer oil rigs that are functioning today than we did before the pandemic,” defined the previous Michigan governor. “And yet the oil and gas industry has leases on 23 million acres of public lands and offshore … We want to encourage them to increase supply. We want supply to be increased both inside the United States and around the world so that we can reduce the pressure.”
In keeping with the EIA, the nationwide common value for a gallon of normal gasoline was about $3.39 as of Monday, down lower than half a cent from final week and up $1.29 from the identical time one 12 months in the past.
“In December, the price will be about $3.19 a gallon and then in January it’s going to go down,” stated Granholm citing projections from what she mistakenly referred to as the “Energy Information Agency.”
“We’re hopeful that prices will be stabilized and start to move down. We’re not saying there’s going to be some dramatic difference,” Granholm stated. “But we also recommend that everybody needs to be a partner in letting people know that last year was an anomaly because demand for gasoline was so low.”
White Home press secretary Jen Psaki additionally struggled to clarify the real-world results of the discharge, which adopted a letter from Biden asking the Federal Commerce Fee to look into potential price-gouging by oil corporations.
Psaki, requested by a reporter to clarify what impression the transfer “might actually have for drivers,” steered there may very well be value reductions on the pump with out being extra particular.
“The president took this step because he’s going to do everything he can to lower costs for the American people,” she stated. “He knows that the price of gas is something that is impacting people as they go into the holiday season as they’re working and looking at their budgets.”
