Nine companies including Chevron Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp and Alon USA Inc have agreed to rent space to store 23 million barrels of crude in the US emergency oil reserve, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, as the Trump administration tries to help energy firms deal with the crash in oil prices.
The Department of Energy, or DOE, said on April 2 it would offer to oil companies 30 million barrels of space in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR. Later in the month, it said that companies were in contract negotiations for only 23 million barrels of space.
President Donald Trump had ordered Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette in March to fill the reserve, which has about 77 million barrels of free space, “to the top.”
