Senators Collins, Levin Release New Report on US Strategic Petroleum Reserve

SENATORS COLLINS, LEVIN RELEASE NEW REPORT ON US STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE
Report says Energy Department wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Carl Levin (D-MI) today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which states that the Department of Energy wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and that the current SPR may be insufficient to protect the United States against a severe supply disruption caused by a variety of international events, including an Iranian oil embargo or a terrorist attack on the Saudi Arabian oil supply.

This GAO report concludes that the U.S. Department of Energy could have saved taxpayers nearly $600 million since 2001 if the Department had developed and used cost-effective procedures for filling the SPR, as Senators Collins and Levin have recommended in the past.

"This report confirms what Senator Levin and I have been saying for years: that DOE can save hundreds of millions of dollars and help mitigate energy price spikes through the proper use and maintenance of the SPR," said Senator Collins. "Instead, DOE ignored its own experts' advice and pursued an inflexible policy that cost taxpayers nearly $600 million while failing to provide energy price relief at those times when it was most needed."

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