The United States has issued a request for proposal for an exchange of up to 17 million barrels of crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Department of Energy said on Friday.
The exchange would be part of a global deal the US struck in Marchto try to control fuel prices impacted by the war on Iran. Washington agreed then to loan 172 million barrels of oil from the SPR as part of a wider deal with about 30 countries in the International Energy Agency to release 400 million barrels from reserves around the world.
The US had previously offered to loan the last batch from the March deal in June. But the US revealed later that month that companies, required to pay premiums of up to 24% in the form of extra barrels of crude returned to the SPR, only agreed to borrow about 500,000 barrels.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones, Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu)