A pair of Senate Democrats, Sens. Alex Padilla and Patty Murray, are calling for the Trump administration to abandon efforts to build a West Coast emergency oil reserve. In a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, they warned that establishing a West Coast Strategic Petroleum Reserve this fiscal year would flout the law and usurp congressional authority.
Background
The plan for a West Coast Strategic Petroleum Reserve came this month from Sable Offshore Corp, which proposed an extension of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a federal emergency stockpile that has been depleted by back-to-back wars involving Russia and now Iran.
According to Politico, Sable said the proposal was made in response to inquiries made by the Trump administration and ongoing discussions with the Department of War for the supply of oil and gas to California. However, details about the proposal are unclear, and Sable did not respond to a request for comment.
Concerns and Opposition
Padilla and Murray suggested in their letter that the West Coast project is being driven by politics, not need. The Energy Department should focus on reinforcing existing reserves, not pursuing costly new proposals driven by political considerations, they wrote.
Tom Kloza, an independent oil analyst and advisor to Gulf Oil, told CNN that the idea of a West Coast SPR is unlikely to gain traction. It’s a bit of a pipe dream, and it looks like a little pet project between the offshore company and the Trump administration, Kloza said.
The problem is that California lacks major oil pipelines connecting it with the rest of the nation’s oil supply. That makes the state vulnerable to supply shocks such as the one caused by the war with Iran and virtual shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
Original reporting: El Paso News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
