With help from Anthony Adragna, Megan Cassella, Ben Lefebvre and Sarah Ferris WHAT TO DO WITH A SMALLER SPR: Congress has promised to pull so much oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that lawmakers on the Hill today are considering what to do with the soon-to-be empty space. A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will discuss a bipartisan draft bill that would allow private companies to lease out the increasingly unused parts of the Gulf of Mexico salt caverns where the Energy Department currently stashes 665.5 million barrels of oil for emergency use. Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) are co-sponsoring the legislation. More than 290 million barrels of oil will be sold from the reserve by 2027 , according to prepared testimony from the Government Accountability Office released ahead of today’s hearing. Those sales were primarily aimed at offsetting the costs of unrelated legislation — […]