House Republicans scored a legislative triumph today aimed at a new constituency: petroleum reserve voters. Their problem: Analysts say there’s no such thing. “It’s safe to say most voters don’t know what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is,” Kevin Book, managing director at the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, said in an interview before today’s 221-205 vote. The decades-old network of petroleum-storing salt caverns has played a starring role nonetheless in the GOP’s opening weeks of House control — coming ahead of high-profile pledges to loosen energy permitting rules, probe the origins of the pandemic and pry open the secrets of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The bill passed today would limit future withdrawals from the reserve, after President Joe Biden sold off about 40 percent of the stockpile to tamp down soaring gasoline prices. The House also held votes on dozens of amendments to the bill, adopting measures that included continued prohibitions on oil and gas leasing off Florida’s coast and much of the Atlantic. Last week, the House passed a bill that would bar exporting the reserve’s oil to China. Neither bill has much chance in the Senate, let alone the White House. So despite all the legislative hoopla, the SPR fight is mainly a Republican messaging exercise — the message being that Democrats are depleting an emergency fuel supply to win elections. “They might get some traction on a message that the president used national security assets for political purposes,” Book said. Then again, political conventional wisdom suggests that voters mainly pay attention to the price they see on the pump when gassing up. Today, that’s a national average of $3.51 a gallon, down from last summer’s high of $5. Messaging switcheroo
Presidents generally have little control over the global oil markets that make gasoline prices fluctuate — as presidents are quick to point out when fuel gets expensive. Still, Biden and his outgoing chief of staff, Ron Klain, have repeatedly credited last year’s SPR releases with lowering gasoline prices. Republicans have also done a messaging about-face. During both the Obama and Trump administrations, GOP lawmakers wrote and passed bills authorizing years of oil reserve sales to help fund the government. Biden has most recently pledged to refill the reserve with oil purchased at prices well below last year’s peaks. And it may be a while before the administration dips into the reserve again. That reality may be good news for anyone concerned about energy security, said Bob McNally, president of the market analysis firm Rapidan Energy Group — as is the new Republican call for oil releases to be more tightly policed. “The main constituency for the SPR is energy security experts, including current and former officials, who understand its value,” said McNally, who was a senior director for international energy in George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “What's interesting is that both Biden and House Republicans are turning away from a bipartisan agreement in recent years to drain the SPR for non-energy expenditures.”
| 
