A top oil industry expert is blasting Joe Biden and his Democratic Party for warring against the fossil fuel industry and pushing insane 'wind' and 'solar' power as well as expensive and imperfect electric vehicles, even as he warned that a "major crisis" is coming in a few weeks.
American Petroleum Institute president and CEO Mike Sommers warned on Fox Business Network during a Friday interview that, as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) Biden has been draining for months to artificially lower gas prices falls to historically low levels, a negligent plan to refill it will no doubt trigger another economically painful oil crisis.
"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, unfortunately, has become the strategic political reserve. And we have grave concerns about how it has been so politicized. This is for emergency purposes, not to lower gasoline prices during a time during a political season," Sommers said Friday on "Mornings with Maria." "But I think doing this willy-nilly and doing it in a way that that doesn't make sense for the market we're in, we could be dealing with another major oil crisis here in the next few weeks.
"We're also real concerned, Maria, about how low it has gone. Lowest level since 1984, not necessarily because of market conditions, but because of political concerns," Sommers added.
When gas prices shot up to as much as $7 a gallon in California earlier this year and $5 a gallon in much of the rest of the country, Biden began ordering hundreds of millions of barrels of oil released to the market in order to bring prices down -- rather than simply get government regulations out of the way and allow for more domestic production, which is what Trump did (leading the country to energy independence for the first time in decades).
When full, the SPR holds 714 million barrels; as of mid-October, after Biden ordered nearly 200 million barrels released over the summer, the inventory had fallen to below 400 million barrels. The president "plans to halt oil sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve once the price of crude dips to $70 a barrel," Fox Business Network reported, a level that should be a "real concern for all Americans," Sommers said.
"The best plan, in my view, is for us not to continue to use it in a way that is for political purposes and rather do it in a market-based way. And if there is an emergency, that's what this is for. And the real concern is that 1984, when it was at the levels that we're in currently, we were using 20% less oil," Sommers told Bartiromo.
Private intelligence firm Forward Observer said in a Friday newsletter to subscribers: "The Department of Energy (DOE) is seeking to cancel or delay sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) mandated by Congress for the years 2024 through 2027. According to DOE Deputy Director for the Office of Petroleum Reserves Doug Macintyre, the administration plans to refill the reserve when oil hits $70 per barrel. According to DOE data, the SPR has a capacity of 700 million barrels of oil and is currently at 389 million barrels."
Sommers added: "As the economy has continued to grow, we're going to need more in the SPR, of course. But let's do this in a way that makes sense for the market. Not that, not in a way that does it for political purposes."
Sommers also pushed back hard on the Biden regime's oft-repeated claim that Biden has issued 9,000 drilling permits to U.S. oil companies that they refuse to use.
"This is such a myth, and it's been debunked multiple times, but the administration continues to use it," he said. "They make it seem like as soon as you get a lease that you can start drilling on that property. That wouldn't be the environmentally sound thing to do. You have to do a lot of prep work before you actually produce on those federal leases, including getting multiple permits."
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