By Jarrett Renshaw
(Reuters) – The White House is weighing an emergency declaration to release diesel from a rarely used stockpile in a bid to address a major supply crunch and blunt rising prices, an administration official said on Monday.
U.S. President Joe Biden has declared that tackling inflation and high gas a prices is the priority of the administration.
The national average price for diesel stood at $5.56 a gallon as of Sunday, shy of the record of $5.58 set last week, according to AAA. This marks a 75% increase from a year ago.
The White House is considering tapping the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, created in 2000 to help with supply issues and used only once in 2012 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
The impact from such a release would be limited by the relatively small size of the reserve, which only contains 1 million barrels of diesel — equal to about a day’s worth of supply in the region.
U.S. distillate stocks two weeks ago hit their lowest level since 2005 and currently sit at 105.3 million barrels, while stocks on the U.S. East Coast hit an all-time low as of May 6 before rebounding in the most recent week to 22.5 million barrels, according to the latest federal data.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Susan Heavey)
