DOE Reports on First Sale of Oil from Strategic Reserve Following Katrina

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy reported today that it has delivered the first crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as promised by President Bush to offset shortages resulting from Hurricane Katrina. A total of 30 million barrels were offered and 11 million barrels were sold to five companies in a competitive bidding process. An additional loan of 13.2 million barrels of crude oil has been made to refiners whose deliveries were interrupted. But where is all the oil coming from? Are we going to run out? The DOE website contains a long list of online resources that describe various efforts to ensure reliable supplies in the future, from methane hydrates to the use of CO2 injections to recover previously unattainable resources in the ground. According to the DOE site, "If only one percent of the methane hydrate resource could be made technically and economically recoverable, the United States could more than double its domestic natural gas resource base."