So, President Joe Biden is taking 50 million barrels of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to cool the rapid rise in gasoline prices. Will it work?

Not for long—if at all.

We use about 20 million barrels per day. So 50 million is enough to supply all our oil for only about 2.5 days. Of course, we’ll spread it over far more days, at far smaller quantities per day, but that’s the total effect.

Meanwhile, it’s a complete misuse of the SPR, designed, when created in response to the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, for truly catastrophic situations imposed on the US by hostile foreign actors—not to cushion the ill effects of domestic policy.

But let’s develop that a bit more. 2.5 days are one 146th of a year. So this release represents about one 146th of our total annual consumption.

If that had proportional impact on price at the pump, and today’s average price for regular at the pump is $3.40, then it would take 1/146th off that price, i.e., $0.023.

So, the $0.936 increase from the average price of $2.464 on January 18, 2021, is 40.7 times the reduction that, figured this way, could come from the release of SPR oil.

Grateful, everybody?

(This article was edited on November 24, 2021, to correct several data errors.)