The United States Government on Saturday said that it had “tools” to deal with high oil prices after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies rebuffed the country’s pleas for the producers to pump more crude.
Asked by a reporter at the White House whether he would authorise a sale from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), President Joe Biden said that his administration would respond at the appropriate time if the prevailing situation continues.
“There are other tools in the arsenal that we have to deal with other countries at an appropriate time,” Biden said.
OPEC+, a group of producers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries, on Thursday snubbed US pleas to go beyond a previous plan to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day from December.
“I’m not anticipating that OPEC would respond, that Russia and/or Saudi Arabia would respond. They are going to pump some more oil. Whether they pump enough oil is a different thing,” Biden added.
In defiance of the US request, OPEC agreed to stick with plans to raise oil output by just 400,000bpd as agreed earlier from December, effectively shunning repeated calls from the world’s biggest oil producer for extra production to tame rising prices.
Biden said his administration will discuss the issue, adding: “We can get more energy in the pipeline figuratively and literally speaking.”
US Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, in the same vein, said that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts petrol prices slipping to $3.05 a gallon in December, saying that that the strategic reserve may come into play.
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