If the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East boils over, U.S. consumers probably shouldn't bank on a familiar government tool to ease the potential impact on what they pay for gasoline. The U.S. government created that tool, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in 1975 to maintain an emergency reserve of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil. 1 But it currently has nowhere near that amount. In fact, since President Biden authorized government sales from the reserve to combat rising oil prices after Russia-Ukraine conflict began in 2022, it's emptier than it's been in nearly four decades. 2 3 The vagaries of global oil ... (full story)