US Sen. Ronald L. Wyden (D-Ore.), who chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee before taking the Finance Committee’s helm in early February, urged the US Department of Energy to begin reevaluating the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve as the Government Accountability Office recommended in an Oct. 20 report (OGJ Online, Oct. 20, 2014).
“The recent shale boom is having a profound effect on US energy policy,” Wyden said in a letter to US Energy Secretary Ernest G. Moniz. “In fact, some policy provisions put in place as recently as 2007 are now at best irrelevant, or at worst detrimental, to national environmental and economic goals, while much of our law in relation to oil and gas conservation and reserves comes from the 1970s.”
He noted that in GAO’s report, which focused more on US crude oil export restrictions, officials from DOE’s Office of Petroleum Reserves told the congressional watchdog service’s investigators that a comprehensive reexamination of the SPR’s size and possible alternatives last occurred in 2005.
Wyden separately noted that the US is obligated to hold at least a 90-day supply of net crude imports in both public and private reserves to maintain its International Energy Agency membership. The SPR currently exceeds that requirement by 16 days, storing a 106-day supply worth about $73 billion, while private reserves total another 141 days of supply, he said.
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