Washington-Sana
The White House today announced the release of 50 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help cool oil prices.
Reuters quoted the White House as saying that this step, in addition to borrowing and selling from the reserve, is being coordinated with moves to withdraw from the strategic reserve by China, India, Japan, South Korea and Britain.
Parallel to Washington's decision to withdraw from US oil reserves, India, in turn, announced that it would pump five million barrels of its strategic reserves in consultation with other major global energy consumers, without specifying the time frame for pumping.
And the administration of US President Joe Biden had previously asked some of the largest oil consuming countries in the world, including China, India and Japan, to study the use of their crude reserves in a coordinated effort to lower prices and stimulate economic recovery.
This unusual demand came as Biden resisted political pressures from high gasoline prices and other consumer costs. The demand also reflected the growing US frustration with OPEC and its allies in the OPEC Plus group, which rejected Washington's repeated requests to speed up its increases in oil production.