The administration of President Donald Trump plans to unveil a budget proposal Tuesday that will call for selling half of the US' crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a plan it says will cut the federal deficit by $16.6 billion, according to the White House.
The proposed fiscal 2018 budget, which will be delivered to the House and Senate this morning, is not expected to be approved by Congress, but is seen as a roadmap for the administration's policy goals.
An outline of the budget proposal calls for reducing the SPR "by half" and claims sales over 10 years would raise $16.6 billion.
As of Friday, the SPR held 687.7 million barrels of crude, including 259.8 million barrels of sweet crude and 427.9 million barrels of sour crude, according to the Department of Energy, which manages the reserve.
In March, DOE sold 10 million barrels of crude from the SPR, the first of a total of 25 million barrels mandated for sale to help pay for a biomedical research bill signed into law in December.
In February, DOE sold 6.4 million barrels for $344.8 million as part of a sale authorized by Congress to partially fund an effort to modernize the SPR and add marine terminal capacity.
DOE plans to sell a total of $2 billion SPR crude oil to pay for modernization and new marine capacity.
In addition to the 25 million barrels to be sold for the biomedical law, Congress has approved a federal budget and transportation bill that will all partially be funded by sales of a combined 124 million SPR barrels.
