Members of a House energy panel said they wanted a federal investigation into whether or not the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be maintained. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established in 1975 in response to the oil embargo enacted by Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. With a design capacity of more than 720 million barrels, it’s the largest emergency supply of oil in the world. Emergency drawdowns in the past were coordinated around international events like the first Gulf War and the onset of civil war in Libya, as well as domestic catastrophes like Hurricane Isaac in 2012. A test sale of oil from the SPR was conducted in 2014 and laws passed recently in the United States […]