Biden's Options to Avert Gas and Energy Price Spikes Are Limited
Richard Newell, RFF's President and CEO, is quoted several times in a CQ Roll Call story about the effect of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy prices.
"'The unfortunate truth is that there are not that many options to address oil and natural gas prices in the short term,' Richard Newell, CEO of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research organization, said in an interview. 'The only short-term policy instrument of any significant relevance is the strategic petroleum reserve, and even that is limited in its effectiveness.'
Because there hasn't been a disruption in oil markets, he said, 'I don't think we're at the point where that makes sense to use.'...
Newell, who worked at the Energy Information Administration during the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as well as during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, said U.S. officials are likely in contact with the International Energy Agency and top oil- and gas-generating nations.
'The ability of those countries to produce more oil and gas in the short term is actually quite limited," he said. 'There isn't a lot of spare capacity that could be brought online in short order.'"
