U.S. House backs bill limiting drawdowns from oil reserve (updated)

Surgepays

27/01/2023 18:00

(Adds details, comments from lawmaker)
       WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of
Representatives passed a bill on Friday limiting the ability of
the energy secretary to tap the strategic oil reserve without
developing plans to increase the amount of public lands
available for oil and gas drilling.
    Representatives backed the bill 221 to 205, with only one
Democrat supporting it. President Joe Biden would veto the
legislation should it pass Congress, the White House said this
week. The bill is expected to face an uphill battle in the
Senate, which unlike the House, is controlled by Biden's fellow
Democrats.
    The Strategic Production Response Act, or H.R.21, requires
the U.S. energy secretary to develop a plan to increase oil and
gas leasing on federal lands, including submerged ones on the
Outer Continental Shelf, before tapping the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. It would not stop the president from tapping the SPR in
case of an emergency, such as a hurricane that halts production
of crude. 
        Republicans, who took control of the House this month,
have pushed a series of political messaging bills that appeal to
conservative voters. 
  
        Republican backers of the bill said the Biden
administration  acted recklessly in selling 180 million barrels
from the reserve last year, or 1 million barrels a day for six
months, in the biggest release ever. That drawdown and others
Biden approved have pushed the level of the SPR to its lowest
since 1983.
  
        "The SPR should be used as a tool of ‘last resort,'"
said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the
House Energy and Commerce Committee and co-sponsor of the bill. 
  
        "Under this bill, if an administration chooses to use
the reserve for non-emergency political purposes, it will first
have to plan that an equal amount would be reinstated from
American energy resources," said Rodgers.
  
        The Biden administration has said it sold the oil to
counter gasoline prices that had risen to $5.00 a gallon that
helped fuel inflation to the highest in decades. Oil prices
spiked last year on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and as the
world began to emerge from the pandemic.
  
        U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters
at the White House this week that Biden "will not allow the
American people to suffer because of the backwards agenda that
House Republicans are advancing."
  
 (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Jonathan Oatis and
David Gregorio)
 ((timothy.gardner@thomsonreuters.com; +1 202 380-8348 (Twitter
@timogard); Reuters Messaging:
timothy.gardner.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))