US could sell 1 million barrels of Northeast Gasoline Stockpile in fiscal year 2024, funding bill to be debated in US Congress says.
According to the draft bill, “the Secretary of Energy will draw and sell one million barrels of refined petroleum product from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve during fiscal year 2024.”
“Upon completion of this sale, the Secretary shall effect the closure of the Northeast Gasoline Supply Depot,” the bill states.
Additionally, one of the provisions is that “The Secretary of Energy may not establish any new regional petroleum reserve unless funding for the proposed regional petroleum reserve is specifically requested in advance in an annual budget submitted by the President” and approved by Congress in a credit law”.
The Department of Energy created the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR) in 2014—the first federal, regional reserve of refined petroleum products containing gasoline—in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 in the northeastern United States.
The NGSR holds a million barrels of gasoline, including 700,000 barrels located in the New York Harbor area, 200,000 barrels in the Boston area and 100,000 barrels in South Portland, Maine.
The same bill to sell the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve aims to bar Chinese entities from buying crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the latest push to limit China's access to US markets.
The bill follows a sale about 1 million barrels from SPR to Unipec America, the US subsidiary of state-owned major Sinopec. That's what happened in 2022 when the Biden administration released more than 180 million barrels of crude from the SPR to curb rising oil prices.
The House has yet to vote on the bill, which provides funding for half of the federal departments for which Congress is responsible for organizing funding, Reuters mentiontedbut with anti-Chinese sentiment quite popular among both Democrats and Republicans, his chances look pretty good.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
