Coping With High Oil Prices: A Summary of Options

Publication Date: April 2000

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Energy

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Abstract:

Owing to a tightness in crude oil supply and accelerated drawdown of oil inventories, the price of home heating oil in the Northeast and diesel fuel rose sharply during the winter of 1999-2000. Gasoline prices soon followed. In the weeks prior to a scheduled late March meeting in Vienna, some Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) producers indicated an inclination to raise production, but there was no firm consensus how much they might be inclined to boost it, or what the schedule for these increases would be. In the meantime, concerns were raised that additional production might reach markets too late to ward off even higher prices for gasoline in the spring and summer.

The Clinton Administration resisted any high profile intervention that would affect prices, preferring instead to try to persuade OPEC to agree to raise the oil production targets that had been agreed to in March 1999. Secretary of Energy Richardson met with a number of oil ministers in late February and March 2000, indicating that producing nations were recognizing the jeopardy to the world economy of prolonged high prices and volatility. On March 28, 2000, OPEC agreed to boost production. While some expect production worldwide to increase roughly 2.0 million barrels daily as a result, many continue to press for action from Congress and the Administration that would provide some relief from high prices, and forestall a similar doubling in fuel prices in the future. Among these have been: lifting a portion of the federal excise tax on gasoline - or all of it, if the price exceeds a specified threshold (S. 2285, H.R. 3749, H.R. 4111); assistance to domestic producers, and reconsideration of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to leasing; legislation to impose sanctions on nations determined by the President to be engaged in oil price fixing (H.R. 3822); sanctions language was dropped before House passage, March 22 (382-38); drawdown, or a ''swap'' of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), an option which the Administration has strongly resisted; establishment of a regional reserve of home heating oil (S. 2047, H.R. 3608), endorsed by the President on March 18, 2000, and passed by the House on April 12, 2000, in H.R. 2884; approving an additional $600 million in emergency funds (H.R. 3908) for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Some argue that intervention in markets to affect prices is unwarranted in the present situation, and that high prices are temporary and are, in the meantime, attracting product to where it is needed.