Liam Denning, Columnist

What Selling Uncle Sam's Oil Means

Given global supply and demand trends, the SPR is overstocked.

May 23, 2017 at 5:39 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

1495561455_GettyImages-577071682 — Photographer: Paul Morigi

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One way for the U.S. to prove its energy dominance is to dump the most prominent manifestation of its dependence on others: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The proposal to sell off half the country's emergency stockpile of 688 million barrels, contained within the White House's budget proposal, has more to do with raising cash. Still, the symbolism of casting off a vestige of America's energy crisis of the 1970s can't be lost entirely on the administration.