Washington in a Flash: Oil Politics

Rob Bluey / June 24, 2011

President Obama’s decision to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will continue to reverberate on Capitol Hill today. Yesterday’s decision came as a surprise but was swiftly condemned. My colleague Rory Cooper writes for the Daily Caller that the SPR shouldn’t be used to “drive down prices whenever the president finds himself politically vulnerable.”

Obama’s action came on the same day the House Energy and Commerce committee approved legislation to expedite a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline to transport oil from Canada. That same committee meets today at 9:30 a.m. to hear from five employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository.

There are no public events at Heritage today, but I will be taking your questions at noon ET for today’s lunchtime chat.

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