Great Lakes Wire

A nonprofit group, The Functional Government Initiative (FGI), has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for refusing to release information about President Joe Biden's major releases from the emergency crude oil reserve amid rising gas prices.

Gas prices are still high across the country and in Michigan. On average, residents in the state are spending $924 more for gasoline this year when compared to last year.

After being denied requested records on the Biden administration’s decision to release millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), FGI announced transparency litigation against the DOE, a recent FGI press release said.

"With each release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we weaken our ability to respond to a legitimate supply crisis," FGI spokesman Peter McGinnis said in a statement, quoted in the release. "The SPR was created to respond to real emergencies, a category that does not include falling poll numbers caused by a failed energy policy. Americans deserve to know if political motives are behind moves that put their security at risk."

In November 2021, as gas prices skyrocketed, the administration announced it was going to tap into the SPR and withdraw 50 million barrels of emergency crude oil, CNBC reported. In the early 1970s, the SPR was created by Congress following the Arab oil embargo with the intent to maintain a reserve to address severe disruptions in supply.

The FGI press release pointed out that there has been no major disruption in the oil supply that would have warranted such a withdrawal. However, the Colonial Pipeline hacking attack in May of 2021, which disrupted fuel supplies to the East Coast, did not trigger a release from the SPR.

FGI said its document request was triggered by concerns that the administration's decision to draw so much oil was in response to Biden's falling approval numbers, due in part to rising gas prices rather than disruptions in supplies. The administration has since made additional releases from the SPR this year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. FGI said these releases have depleted the reserve to dangerous levels not seen since the 1980s.

In January, FGI opened an investigation into the decision to release the first 50 million barrels from the SPR. Despite FGI's repeated efforts to work with the DOE during the investigation, the agency has not complied with its obligations under the Freedom of  Information Act (FOIA), and FGI said it believes this lawsuit is the only way to force the DOE to release the records that could reveal to Americans "the true basis for this unprecedented drawdown of the SPR."

The latest Gasoline Misery Index, which tracks how much more (or less) the average American consumer is paying for gasoline on an annualized basis, shows that on average Michiganders are spending $924 more annually on gasoline now than they did at this time last year.

The Biden administration reportedly exported 5 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to countries in Europe and Asia last month, Reuters recently reported. Cargoes of SPR crude were sent to the Netherlands and to a Reliance refinery in India. Additionally, a third cargo is headed to China, and U.S. Customs data shows the fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, Phillips 66, shipped approximately 470,000 barrels of sour crude from the Bi  Hill SPR storage site in Texas to Trieste, Italy.

On March 31, Biden announced the release of up to 180 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR over a six-month period in his effort to curb high gas prices. The president claimed there would be a slight delay in the decline of gas prices by days or weeks, but the prices would drop by an unknown range.

"It could come down fairly significantly," he said. "It could come down [to] a better part of anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon, it’s unknown at this point."