WTI Crude prices have tumbled from almost $79.50 overnight to barely above $77 as inventories were seen rising for the second week, Russian President Vladimir Puttin offered to placate Europe's natural gas pain (removing a pillar of support for oil from gas-to-crude rotation), and now The FT reports that US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm has raised the prospect of releasing crude oil from the government’s strategic petroleum reserve, declaring that “all tools are on the table” as the Biden administration confronts a politically perilous surge in the price of gasoline.

“It’s a tool that’s under consideration,” Granholm said of a release of crude supplies from the national strategic petroleum reserve, which analysts say could calm oil markets and bring prices down.

“SPR [releases] came on the table a nanosecond after Jake Sullivan was rebuffed in Riyadh and the administration realised shale producers wouldn’t be able to increase production quickly enough,” said Bob McNally, head of Rapidan Energy Group and a former adviser to the George W Bush White House.

Granholm also did not rule out a ban on crude oil exports.

“That’s a tool that we have not used, but it is a tool as well,” she told the FT Energy Transition Strategies Summit on Wednesday.

WTI extended its losses on this latest news...

The last big release was in 2011, when the Obama administration worked with other International Energy Agency members to tap emergency stocks to bring down soaring prices. Congress has also authorised periodic sales to raise government revenue.