The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently issued a Notice of Sale for crude from its Strategic Petroleum Reserves, with bids for 8 million barrels of light, sweet oil due by January 17th. The sale is part of a resolution to sell up to USD $375.4 million of crude in the fiscal year 2017 to fund operational improvements to the infrastructure that holds the emergency reserves.
The sale comes roughly a year after the US lifted a decades-long ban on exporting domestic oil. There are approximately 695 million barrels of oil in the reserves, which are kept in heavily guarded salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
The DOE will sell up to 3 million barrels from Bryan Mound, Texas; up to 3 million barrels from Big Hill, Louisiana; and up to 2 million barrels from West Hackberry, Louisiana. Contracts will be awarded at the end of January.