Budget doesn’t allocate funds to build oil reserve

President proposal has no provision to satisfy Congressional requirement that strategic reserve grow to 1 billion barrels.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress is requiring the Bush administration to add almost 300 million barrels to the nation’s emergency oil stockpile, but the White House on Monday did not seek money to buy the crude in its proposed budget for the 2007 spending year sent to Congress.

In sweeping energy legislation signed into law last year, Congress required the administration to boost capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1 billion barrels from its current 727 million barrels.

The stockpile was created by Congress in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo. It currently holds about 684 million barrels of crude in underground caverns at four sites in Texas and Louisiana.

The administration loaned 9.8 million barrels of crude to oil refineries and sold another 11 million barrels last autumn after Hurricane Katrina disrupted supplies.

Reuters