WASHINGTON (WV News) — Reacting to an announcement made by the Biden Administration Tuesday to release oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, West Virginia's U.S. Senate delegation took aim at the administration's broader energy policies.

 

The White House on Tuesday morning announced the U.S. Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the reserve in order to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply.

 

"Today's release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an important policy Band-Aid for rising gas prices but does not solve for the self-inflicted wound that shortsighted energy policy is having on our nation," said U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., called the move "an effort to mask the fallout of President Biden’s terrible energy policies."

 

Capito pointed to the administration's efforts to curb oil and gas drilling on federal land and the halting of the Keystone XL pipeline — which would have brought oil from Canada into the U.S. — as examples of policy she says "put our energy independence in further jeopardy while increasing the prices Americans pay at the pump and to heat and light their homes."

 

“To top it all off, the earliest that today’s announcement could have any kind of limited impact on the market would be after Christmas, but Americans can’t wait," she added. "They are hurting now. And they are feeling the impacts of the administration’s runaway inflationary policies by paying higher prices for many things they can’t live without as we head into the holidays."

 

Manchin urged the Biden administration to adjust its policy to make the U.S. more energy independent.

 

"Historic inflation taxes and the lack of a comprehensive all-of-the-above energy policy pose a clear and present threat to America's economic and energy security that can no longer be ignored," he said. "I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built...

"To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country's future.”

 

The release of oil from the U.S. reserve will be made in parallel with other major energy consuming nations including China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom in a combined effort to address global shortages, according to Tuesday's announcement from the White House.

 

"This culminates weeks of consultations with countries around the world, and we are already seeing the effect of this work on oil prices. Over the last several weeks as reports of this work became public, oil prices are down nearly 10%," the statement said.