High oil prices put focus on Strategic Petroleum Reserve

New York – Uncle Sam is adding 60,000 barrels of oil a day to giant underground caverns in Texas and Louisiana to be used for the proverbial “rainy day.”

Is it raining yet?


The price of oil is moving closer to $120 a barrel, up almost $19 a barrel for the month. Gasoline stations can barely change their prices fast enough, and the cost of regular grade hit a record $3.54 a gallon on Wednesday morning, according to GasPriceWatch.com.

The driving club AAA is raising its estimate of Memorial Day pump prices to $3.75 a gallon, up 25 cents a gallon from its earlier prediction.

“At some point, we have to think about whether we have a price emergency on our hands,” says Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesman for AAA in Heathrow, Fla.

Christian Science Monitor