US Senator Calls on Energy Dept. to Probe Contamination of Emergency Oil Reserve

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd May, 2019) The US Energy Department must investigate the cause of the contamination affecting the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), Senator Edward Markey said in a letter on Wednesday.

"If there are questions regarding the quality of oil in the reserve, it could decrease companies' interest in SPR reserves and drive down the price they are willing to pay for it," Markey said in the letter. "Please describe the steps that the Department of Energy is taking to ensure that oil in the reserves or future cargo is not contaminated."

The letter, addressed to the Energy Department's Fossil Energy Assistant Secretary Steven Winberg, said that Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Macquarie Group, and PetroChina have all filed complaints that oil purchased from the SPR reserves has been contaminated with levels of hydrogen sulfide that are above the US government safety standards.

The letter also requests the Energy Department's Office of Fossil Energy to provide information on whether it made efforts to clean the contaminated oil it sold from its SPR reserves and what they think may be causing the high hydrogen sulfide contamination in the oil.

The letter requests the Office of Fossil Energy respond to his questions by May 10.

The letter notes that the SPR as of April 12 contained 649.1 million barrels of sweet and sour crude oil and that recent legislation mandates the sale of 266 million barrels of crude oil from the SPR reserves by 2027.

The SPR is the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil, according to the Energy Department, which can be drawn upon only by presidential directive. The SPR has been used in emergency situations only three times, including in 2011 to offset disruptions in the crude oil supply chain as a result of the unrest in Libya. The SPR was established in the aftermath of the oil crisis in the early 1970s sparked by the OPEC embargo.