Liam Denning, Columnist

Biden Blew a Winning Oil Bet After Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

The White House has wasted an opportunity to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and build trust with oil producers.

March 28, 2023 at 11:00 AM 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.

Pump pressure.
Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America

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When the White House announced plans last fall to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at specific oil prices, it raised the unsettling prospect of Uncle Sam becoming a player in commodity-land’s greatest casino. This was the wrong way of looking at it. The administration’s erratic conduct since then, however, suggests President Joe Biden may really have gotten a taste for gambling.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told lawmakers recently that it would be “difficult” to refill the SPR this year due to ongoing Congressionally-mandated sales from the reserve and maintenance at two storage sites. At any other time, this would be barely newsworthy. But the administration’s own actions have made it so.