US plans to lease space to energy firms to store oil in emergency reserve
The U.S. Department of Energy plans to announce as soon as Wednesday it will allow oil companies to lease space in the emergency oil reserve, as it seeks to comply with President Donald Trump’s directive to fill the facility to capacity, two industry sources said.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, has the capacity to take another 77 million barrels of oil, a little less than the country uses in four days.
Trump ordered the Department of Energy, or DOE, on March 13 to take advantage of low oil prices and fill the reserve “to the top”, in an effort to help domestic drillers suffering from the global oil price drop. But carrying out the order has been tricky.
