Biden's latest plan to try to bring gas prices down: Releasing 1 million barrels of oil a day from the government's stockpile for 6 months

• The US will release 1 million barrels of oil per day for six months to try to lower gas prices, the White House announced.
• The release will come from the US's reserves and global allies are set to announce similar programs.

The US will unleash an unprecedented amount of supply from its oil stockpile to try to pull gas prices down from near-record levels, the Biden administration announced Thursday.

The government will release one million barrels of crude oil every day for the next six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to better match supply with overwhelming demand, according to a press release. That equates to roughly 180 million barrels set to hit the market by the time the program ends in the fall. The release is meant to "serve as a bridge" until the end of 2022 when domestic production ramps up and can backfill the need for increased oil inventory, the officials said.

The administration is coordinating the release with allies around the world who are expected to announce releases of their own. The cooperation will bring the total release to "well over" 1 million barrels per day, the officials said.

The move comes as US gas prices sit at historic highs. Crude prices leaped higher in early March as Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked concerns around global supply pressures. Prices climbed even higher after President Joe Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and natural gas. The rally has boosted the average US gas price to roughly $4.23 per gallon as of Thursday, according to AAA, up from a month-ago average of about $3.60.

It's unclear just how much the release can lower prices. The White House stopped short of providing any estimates, though Biden offered an encouraging outlook for once the release hits the crude oil market.

"It will come down, and it could come down fairly significantly. It could come down the better part of 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon, it's unknown at this point," the president said in a Thursday press conference, adding he's waiting to see how much oil US allies decide to release.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve serves as an emergency underground stockpile of crude oil meant to backfill supply in times of need. The network can hold up to 724 million barrels of crude and was last topped off in December 2009. The reserve held about 594 million barrels of crude at the end of 2021.

Biden has already turned to the strategic reserve twice to put downward pressure on gas prices. The administration announced a release of 50 million barrels in November as supply-chain issues hindered the energy market. Biden unleashed another 30 million barrels of crude on March 1 to counter price pressures linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The latest release is part of a larger effort to lower gas prices and shrink the imbalance in the US oil market. The White House called on Congress to approve so-called "use-it-or-lose-it" fees on oil companies, senior administration officials said. The measures would force companies to pay fees on leased wells that haven't been used in years, as well as public land that firms "are hoarding without producing." Companies that are producing from existing wells and leased land won't have to pay the fees, creating an incentive for domestic oil firms to increase production.

"The industry has indicated that they can get online an additional million barrels per day this year. That is something that we need, that they should be doing," an official said. "But we know it will take months, not days, for that production to come online."

The White House also posed the current predicament as an opportunity to speed up the country's transition to clean energy. The president is set to use the Defense Production Act to secure the domestic production and processing of minerals used in batteries including lithium, nickel, and cobalt. The move aims to bolster the US's clean-energy economy and reduce reliance on other countries for such materials, the White House said.

Biden is reviewing other uses of the Defense Production Act to further the transition to an independent and cleaner domestic energy sector, the press release added.

"The path to real American energy independence depends on reducing our reliance on foreign oil and on fossil fuels," an official said. "And the path to that energy security runs through clean energy."