Firn---More information concerning the recent SPR sell of 5M barrels of sour crude---the same quality as sold by the Russians from the Urals.

SPR oil put up for sale on the day Ukraine’s new chief is in town

By John Kingston | March 12, 2014 04:27 PM Comments (3)

One trader speaking to a Platts reporter had this to say about the decision by the Department of Energy today to sell 5 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“The Gulf Coast market has plenty of barrels,” he said. “They should have done it a few weeks ago when the Gulf Coast was tight due to all the weather delays.”

A few weeks ago, however, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk wasn’t in Washington. He’s the interim President of Ukraine, and he’s in DC today.

It almost defies logic to think there isn’t a link. (And White House press secretary Jay Carney said there isn’t one, when asked about it at the daily White House press briefing.)

But there is no reason to sell oil now. The reason given by the Department of Energy — a test sale to evaluate its ability to distribute oil in the event of an emergency — sounds very formal and entirely believable. But such a test hasn’t been done since 1990. Why now?

The “energy weapon” that has been discussed so vehemently since the Ukraine crisis began — using US LNG and crude oil exports to weaken world prices and steal Russia’s energy customers — always had a few flaws in it. First of all, even for the terminals where LNG exports have been approved, they aren’t ready to go. Second, US crude exports are still banned, despite lots of talk of changing that.

But selling oil out of the SPR, and specifying that it’s sour crude that’s for sale — the same type as Urals, Russia’s crude grade — can be done now. Next month, in fact, 5 million barrels of oil over 30 days, for an average of just over 165,000 b/d.