July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy said on Monday it had finalized a contract to purchase 4.65 million barrels of crude oil for the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for delivery to the Bayou Choctaw site in Louisiana during the last three months of the year.
Exxon Mobil (XOM.N)
will supply 3.9 million barrels of the contract, while Macquarie Commodities Trading US LLC will supply the rest, the DOE said. The average purchase price for the oil is about $76.92 per barrel, the DOE said.
The purchase is the latest in a string of contracts intended to refill the nation’s emergency oil stockpile following a
record release of 180 million barrels in 2022. That sale was an effort to control gasoline prices that spiked to more than $5.00 a gallon after President Vladimir Putin ordered
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it also reduced the reserves to the lowest in 40 years.
The DOE said it has since repurchased a total of 43.25 million barrels at an average price of around $77 a barrel, after having sold the oil at around $95 a barrel during the 2022 release, which it called a "good deal for taxpayers."
