The United States plans to release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserves over four months, beginning next week, the Energy Department said Wednesday evening. This is part of a coordinated effort by the International Energy Agency, whose 32 member countries have agreed to put additional oil supplies into the market to try to prevent prices from rising further because of the war in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, oil prices continued to rise on Wednesday evening, with Brent crude, the international benchmark approaching $100 a barrel. Brent fetched less than $90 a barrel earlier in the day, before the I.E.A. announced plans for its members to release oil from their reserves.
President Trump had alluded to those plans earlier in the day in an interview with a local television station in Cincinnati. Mr. Trump told a reporter on a visit to Ohio to promote his economic policies that he would release some oil from the U.S. strategic reserve to try to alleviate pressure on the cost oil and the prices that Americans are paying at the pump. Gasoline prices in the United States had climbed for the 11th straight day, to an average of $3.58 a gallon.
“We’ll do that, and then we’ll fill it up,” Mr. Trump said of the tapping the strategic reserve. “Right now, we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said President Trump’s move to release oil from strategic reserves should have come days earlier and that Mr. Trump had “created many more problems than the strategic petroleum reserve will solve.” Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Mr. Schumer said the effects of a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz are being felt and that “Americans are paying the price.”
Chris Cameron and Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
Rebecca F. Elliott covers energy for The Times.
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