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Mix-Ansicht- Rohölinteressenkonflikt: Kerry Limited In Ability To Stop Filling US Oil Reserve - off-shore-trader, 03.11.2004, 00:17
Rohölinteressenkonflikt: Kerry Limited In Ability To Stop Filling US Oil Reserve
-->Kerry Limited In Ability To Stop Filling US Oil Reserve
Nov 02, 2004
WASHINGTON, Nov 02, 2004 (Dow Jones)--John Kerry would have a tough time as president stopping the
filling of the country's emergency oil stockpile, a reality that would blunt his
already limited ability to bring down oil prices.
By the time a victorious Kerry would take office Jan. 20, the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve will only be about 18 million barrels away from peak capacity,
and the Bush administration has already signed contracts with companies to
supply the crude needed to bring the reserve to its maximum 700 million barrels
by May.
"The Kerry administration would have some contractual issues they have to deal
with, because they already have the contracts for the intermediate future," said
John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry
group."They would have to deal with contract breaking."
Some traders said the prospect of a Kerry victory in Tuesday's election
contributed to some of the oil market's sharp decline on Monday. A Kerry
administration would stop filling the reserve and be more amenable to tapping it
to cool prices, the thinking goes, something President George W. Bush has
refused to do.
Whether even that step would do much to cool prices now hovering around $50 a
barrel in New York is much debated, as demand remains strong and the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could just trim output to
compensate.
Democrats Seen Willing
Currently the SPR holds 669.5 million barrels in salt caverns in Louisiana and
Texas. Since the reserve was created in 1975, it has only be used once to
counter a potential supply disruption - in January 1991, when U.S. forces
attacked Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait.
Former President Bill Clinton released 30 million barrels from the reserve in
the fall of 2000, citing a looming shortfall of heating oil, and reserve oil has
been released to refiners seven times in the form of swaps, most recently in
September, after Hurricane Ivan wreaked havoc on oil and gas installations in
the Gulf of Mexico.
On the campaign trail, Kerry criticized the Bush administration for continuing
to fill the reserve with prices so high and supplies tight, but stopped short of
calling for a release of SPR oil.
Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said that if John Kerry were in power
today, he would freeze contributions to the SPR, but added that it would be
hypothetical to discuss what would happen in January, because oil prices could
ease by then.
"Those who have been vocal about opening the SPR to the market have been mostly
Democrat politicians, so the feeling is probably that with Kerry as president,
it may be somewhat more likely that the U.S. would put its inventories into the
market," said Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources studies at the Cato
Institute, a libertarian think tank.
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