The US President Joe Biden has ordered the Department of Energy to use all tools, including releasing oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), to ease fuel disruptions after the Category 4 Hurricane Ida slammed the US Gulf Coast on Sunday. As part of the move, Exxon will receive a loan of 1.5 million barrels of crude from emergency stocks to be processed into gasoline at its refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The DoE also encouraged refiners to prioritize product supplies to affected areas.
Many refineries in Louisiana are still cut off from crude supplies as ship and barge navigation is still restricted in some portions of the Mississippi River. At the same time, 1.7 million bpd (94%) of oil production in the US Gulf of Mexico were offline on Thursday, according to producers’ voluntary reports to the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
The US has four SPR facilities in Louisiana and Texas. As of last week, these facilities held 21.3 million barrels of crude in stock, the lowest since 2003. Refiners receiving SPR crude loan have to pay it back at a later date with interest, the DoE said.
