Obama's oil release long gone

Remember just this week when President Obama ordered the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

Looks pretty good, yes?

On the right is the SPR release. On the left is America's daily consumption of petroleum in all its products, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Do the math:

Daily consumption - 18,771,000 barrels per day (actually almost 3 million bpd less than it was before the recession).

SPR release - 30 millions barrels.

How long before the SPR release is all used up - 1.6 days, which is to say, yesterday.

The administration claimed that it was releasing the oil because of disruptions of supply from Libya (talk about a self-inflicted wound!) and other countries. But this is a canard. According to the US Energy Information Administration, worldwide consumption lags production daily by almost 117 million bpd. There is no meaningful disruption of supply.

So why release the oil from the Reserve? One thing we can discount right away: it could not possibly have anything to do with the 2012 election. Nope, not at all.