U.S. Senator Susan Collins today voted in favor of an amendment that would require the Administration to suspend oil shipments for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The amendment passed the Senate 97-1. The House is expected to pass similar legislation later today.
“The Administration’s decision to fill the SPR when oil prices are so high defies common sense,” said Senator Collins. “It simply does not make sense for the Department of Energy to be purchasing oil for the reserve at a time when oil prices exceed $100 a barrel. The federal government is taking oil off the market and thus driving up prices at a time when families, truckers, and small business owners are struggling to pay their fuel bills.”
The SPR is an emergency stockpile and an essential safeguard against major disruptions in global oil markets. However, the SPR already contains nearly 700 million barrels of oil—97 percent of its current storage capacity.
Senator Collins worked with Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) on a bipartisan provision that was successfully included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that requires the Department of Energy to procedures for obtaining oil for the SPR, with particular regard to the effect that acquiring oil for the SPR would have on oil prices and supplies.
In January, Senators Collins, Levin, Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), and Norm Coleman (R-MN), wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Energy urging him to temporarily suspend filling the SPR.
In addition to suspending acquisition for the SPR, Senator Collins has also proposed regulating energy future markets and repealing tax breaks for major oil companies in order to immediately address the high cost of energy. In the long-term, Senator Collins recently proposed a 10-Point Plan to achieve energy independence by the year 2020.
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