The US administration has suspended plans to purchase US crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), after failing to secure funding from the Congress, and has withdrawn a tender for the first part of its oil purchase programme.

Eralier in March 2020, the US Department of Energy (DoE) decided to buy up to 30 mbl of crude oil by the end of June 2020 for the SPR, to comply with a presidential directive to fill up the SPR with US crude oil. The SPR has a total storage capacity of 713.5 mbl, with an available capacity of 77 mbl in underground salt caverns along the US Gulf Coast. The United States thus decided to buy around 77 mbl of crude oil from small and mid-sized US producers for an estimated US$3bn.

However the US$3bn funding was not included in the US$2,000bn stimulus package agreed last week by the White House and Senate.