The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced it is selling up to 40.1 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

The Notice of Sale is part of President Biden’s announcement on 31st March 2022 to release one million barrels of crude oil a day for six months to address the significant global supply disruption caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine and help stabilise volatile energy costs.

A total of 90 million barrels will be released between May and mid-August, which includes 20 million barrels already scheduled to be released this month before the March announcement.

An additional 90 million barrels of crude oil will be released between August and October.

Under this latest notice of sale, the SPR is offering to release up to 39 barrels of sour crude oil and 1.1 million barrels of sweet crude oil.

The DOE must receive bids for this notice of sale no later than 10.00am Central Time on 1st June 2022 and will award contracts to successful applicants no later than 10th June 2022.

The SPR is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil and the federally-owned oil stocks are stored in underground salt caverns at four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana.