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Strategic Petroleum Reserve

March 15, 2012 by · Comments Off on Strategic Petroleum Reserve 

Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Oil prices dropped quickly Thursday on a news report that Britain and the United States would cooperate on a release of crude oil from strategic reserves, but the Obama administration said the report was “not accurate” and played down the talks with British officials.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “Among the many topics of discussion the British prime minister and president had were energy issues and the situation globally with the rise in the price of oil,” but he added that “I can say very clearly that the report” that there was an agreement on specific actions or a timetable for those actions “is false. It is not accurate.”

“The report of any kind of agreement or timetable associated with an agreement on a course of action is just wrong,” Carney said.

Earlier, Reuters reported that Britain had agreed to cooperate with the United States to dampen high oil prices and prevent them from slowing down economic growth in an election year.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, the price of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate grade of crude oil, which had climbed to $106.18 a barrel, fell about $2 a barrel. They started climbing again in early afternoon after the White House denied the Reuters report.

Many oil experts said the Obama administration would remain under pressure to release strategic reserves because of the soaring price of gasoline. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman was in Kuwait for a conference earlier this week and warned oil exporters that high prices could derail the economic recovery.

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