A newly passed U.S. Senate amendment would cancel the delivery of 53 million barrels of crude oil planned for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to keep the crude in the market and ease soaring gasoline prices, a spokeswoman for Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Friday.
The Senate passed the measure late Thursday night as an amendment to the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, a blueprint for $2.63 trillion in federal spending. It was unclear whether the measure would be supported by the House
The budget resolution is not legislation signed by the president. Instead it is a plan that future appropriations bills will use as a guideline.
Halting the deliveries of crude oil into the nation's emergency stockpile would keep more oil in the market and lower gasoline prices by an estimated 10 cents to 25 cents per gallon, the Collins spokeswoman said.
"At a time when oil prices are at near record highs and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already 93 percent at capacity, it makes good public policy sense to temporarily suspend SPR purchases and use these dollars for homeland security," Collins said in a statement.
A spokesman for the U.S. Energy Department was not immediately available for comment.