Obama under pressure to release oil reserves

US president Barrack Obama is coming under pressure from his party to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to the oil industry.

According to reports, the US is giving serious consideration to using some of the oil, which is stored in salt caverns along the coast of Texas and Louisiana, in order to drive prices down and it has been shown to be beneficial in the past.

However, the 727 million barrels of oil stored in the SPR would only provide temporary relief from high prices and on previous large-scale sales of the reserves, crises have been fairly short-lived, not something which is likely to be said about the unrest in the Middle East.

Ed Crooks, writing for the Financial Times, warned that opening the SPR to the oil industry now would only create a short-term respite but would leave a lasting legacy which may leave the US unable to respond to shortages in the future.