The US Department of Energy announced Tuesday that it has approved a swap of 13.4 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic reserves, in an attempt to help offset rising gasoline prices.
The barrels will go to seven companies, which must return the oil in the future to the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (REP), with interest to be paid in the form of crude oil.
The measure is part of the decision of the government of the US president, Joe Biden, to release 50 million barrels of oil from reserves, with the aim of addressing the mismatch between fuel demand and supply and containing inflation.
40 million barrels have already been released
Since Biden announced that decision in November and counting on Tuesday’s announcement, 40 million barrels have already been released, which is the second largest crude oil exchange in US history, following the one registered in 2000 with Heating Oil. Reserve.
Of the barrels released under Tuesday’s deal, 4.2 million will go to Shell, 3 million to Trafigura Trading, 2.3 to Phillips 66, 2 million to Macquarie Commodities Trading and 0.9 million to Chevron, it said. the Department of Energy in a statement.
In addition, half a million barrels will be loaned to ExxonMobil and another half million to BP, the note added.
The US strategic reserves, located in large underground caverns in the south of the country, are the largest in the world and are currently around 600 million barrels.
The United States’ decision to release part of its strategic reserves was made in coordination with other major oil consumers, such as China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
Inflation is skyrocketing in the United States, with figures not seen in four decades, and the price of gasoline has shot up almost 50% in the accumulated last year, according to the December report from the country’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, energy prices fell in December for the first time in several months, and gasoline prices fell 0.5% in December from the previous month.