Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP/FileSource: AFPThe US Department of Energy announced Tuesday that it will sell off a million barrels of gasoline from a small strategic reserve in the northeast, paving the way for its closure. However, the release of a million barrels of gasoline from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve (NGSR) is likely to have little real impact on prices, given the US consumed roughly nine million barrels of motor gasoline every day last year, on average, according to the US Energy Information Administration. It requires the department to deposit the proceeds from the sale of the gasoline into the Treasury, and then to close the NGSR down. The NGSR was set up by then-president Barack Obama in 2014 to try to avoid the sort of gasoline supply issues that arose after Hurricane Sandy swept through the northeast of the country in 2012. The NGSR is dwarfed in size by America's gargantuan Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently holds almost 370 million barrels of oil, according to recently published data from the Department of Energy.

Source: The Star May 22, 2024 09:23 UTC