Dog In The Manger

OPEC made an effort to urge the United States to use its strategic petroleum reserve to bring down world oil prices.
OPEC head Purnomo Yusgiantoro said on Wednesday he had approached Washington to suggest the move to help prices down from $55 a barrel.
"We had communication with them. I asked them to use their reserves," Yusgiantoro told reporters in Jakarta.

The Bush administration has declined blank the call. Washington says the stocks are held in case of a severe supply disruption, in line with the policy of the International Energy Agency.

The last major release of the US strategic reserves, which holds 670 million barrels of crude, was in 2000 and helped bring an end to a rally that saw prices jump from $10 to nearly $38 in just 20 months.

This autumn Washington has loaned 5.4 million barrels of sweet crude oil from the emergency stockpile to five refiners to offset supplies disrupted by Hurricane Ivan in mid-September.

The IEA said on Tuesday it agreed Washington did not need to suspend crude oil shipments to its SPR because refineries were adequately supplied with crude. "As far as I know the shipments (to) the reserves are crude, and the market now does not need additional crude," said IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil.