Report to Congress on the Feasibility of Establishing a Heating Oil Component to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Sent to Congress in July 1998
A Department of Energy (DOE) report, commissioned in 1996 when high prices and low stocks of heating oil raised consumer concerns, has concluded that a Government-controlled "regional petroleum product reserve" would make economic sense only under a very narrow set of conditions.
The report, which DOE forwarded to Congress in 1998, concludes that the benefits of a Government stockpile of heating oil in the Northeast would exceed its costs only if the reserve was relatively small, approximately 2 million barrels, located in leased terminals, and filled by trading crude oil from the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the distillate product.
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