RE:Why is the Biden administration not refilling the SPR"The only two possible reasons that I can think of for not buying back oil at current prices are:
1) they think prices will go lower
2) they don't intend to refill the SPR as they believe it is no longer necessary"
It's NOT one of those reasons and only MigraineCall "lightly" touched upon the REAL reasons behind the SPR not being refilled.....at this time. I think most of you, except MigraineCall of course, are missing the most obivious reason. The US Gov't doesn't wish to at this time. Why? Because if they do, as Migraine states here, "It would also tighten the market.....like the medium sour Russian Urals, which would drive the price up for Russia at a tiime when the US is trying to limit Russia's income.". I think THIS would be evident to everyone here, but obivously it's not, and people still think the US Gov't isn't trying to disrupt or bankrupt Russia. Which of course they are and ONE of the reason why the SPR isn't being refilled.
So besides the SPR being used as both a political tool & being weaponized as another for the purpose of damaging another nation they see as a threat to their agendas, the SPR as MigraineCall states once more on target here, "Higher oil prices as a result of an SPR refill now would result in higher inflation, making the Fed's job tougher", is also being used for another HUGE reason. You see in the past the current US Gov'r & the FED were using QT through the increase of the Fed funds rate. One of their limited tools to do effectively. BUT because this action resulted in the disruption & decimation of small regional banking system, THAT tool was rendered somewhat useless & limited and now could only be used sparingly...and they must proceed with caution when doing so.
And now this leads us to the SPR. The only other "effective" tools to clamp down on inflation were to tighten or limit the money supply or much lower energy prices. And i guess you guys can NOW figure out which one the US Gov't choose to go with. The latter. And what better way to accomplish this than to totally drain the SPR at record rates (and NOT refill it anytime soon!), among the many other tools in their rather large tool box to do this.
Now you KNOW why......
GLTA