Save for later Print Download Share LinkedIn Twitter The Biden administration’s 50 million barrel release from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) on Nov. 24 is meeting a market that is well supplied and facing a surplus in the first half of 2021. So far only Exxon Mobil is keen to take oil in an exchange — 4.8 million bbl of 32 million bbl available. Traders have until Jan. 4 to make offers on 18 million bbl of a mix of sweet and sour grades for delivery in February and March 2022. The limited interest for oil that needs to be returned to the SPR is somewhat of an anticlimax to weeks of speculation that the US government would release oil to bring prices of crude — and especially gasoline — down. The 18 million bbl of sales come on top of sales already arranged. SPR stocks have fallen below 600 million bbl, their lowest level in 18 years, after starting the year at 638 million bbl.
