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Make Me Smart

The lowdown on our backup oil

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2022

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As energy prices soar due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. is drawing on government petroleum reserves. But getting the oil flowing and to market isn’t easy. We’ll explain the realities of tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Plus, an hourslong gap in former President Donald Trump’s phone log on Jan. 6, 2021, is drawing scrutiny from Democrats in Congress. In Texas, parents of transgender kids are weighing the costs of staying or leaving the state, given new anti-trans orders. And finally, some very clever basketball-loving law students in North Carolina made us smile.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Got a question for the hosts? Saw something interesting you want to share? Email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART(508-827-6278).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm not hearing anything Bridget. I'm just hearing me talking and Kimberly talking.

0:06.8

I hear music though. Yeah, I guess it's everyone charging. Yeah, it's good. Everything's fine. Let's just go.

0:14.1

Okay, yes, let's go. I'm Kimberly Adams and welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make

0:19.2

today make sense. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Kai Rosdoll. It is Thursday. That means

0:24.7

we've got some news to go over, so make me smiles to share before we get y'all on your way.

0:29.3

So we will dig right in. Tell you what, I'll go first. Just in the sequence of events here,

0:35.4

because I think that works better with the Make Me Smile sequencing. So, I just I feel the

0:41.6

need to make sure everybody understands what's going on with the whole strategic petroleum reserve

0:46.6

release that the president announced today, and which has sent oil prices down, you know,

0:51.5

the US bench, Marquise, Texas intermediate, about 6% today. So it just to go over the details,

0:58.0

it's going to be a million barrels a day for 180 days, starting as soon as the strategic

1:04.0

petroleum reserve can get its stuff together and get all that oil flowing, which is what I really

1:08.7

want to point out. It's an article in Bloomberg, which lays out some of the realities about the SPR

1:15.1

that maybe not everybody is aware of. Okay, so first of all, it is, as I think we have sent

1:20.4

a marketplace. It's the world's biggest emergency supply. Started after the Arab oil embargo of

1:26.1

the 1970s, and it was designed, and this is important two last 25 years. That's the lifespan

1:32.6

that the equipment was designed for. We are now well beyond that. And what happens is that every time

1:37.6

you use this oil, every time you draw down, because let's remember, it's not stored in tanks and

1:43.9

accessible stuff above ground. It's in salt caves underground. So you pull oil out, you put oil in

1:50.8

your pool, all out, you put oil in there is deterioration in the piping. There's deterioration in the

1:55.9

physical structure of the strategic petroleum reserve. It takes about 20 days to get oil to market

2:02.6

from the SPR. So that's going to be a little bit of a problem because we want it today, and it's

...

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