Sen. Tom Cotton is putting the Biden administration's energy legacy under a microscope. The Arkansas Republican fired off a letter to Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, first obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding answers about the previous administration's massive releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the state of replenishment left behind.
Cotton charged that the Biden administration released 180 million barrels from the nation's reserves in 2022 for one purpose: electoral survival.
The decision to drain the SPR was not a response to a supply emergency; it was a deliberate political act designed to protect Democrats from the consequences of their own failed energy policies.
The timing of that letter carries weight. Oil prices spiked to four-year highs over the weekend, and congressional Democrats are now demanding that President Trump tap the very reserve they spent years hollowing out.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has a capacity for over 700 million barrels of crude oil. At the end of Biden's term, it held about 415 million barrels, according to Department of Energy data. Cotton wrote that Biden's drawdowns drained the reserve to a 40-year low.
Biden tapped the reserve twice. Once in 2021, ostensibly to relieve soaring fuel prices as the nation dealt with economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Then again, the following year, releasing the 180 million barrels Cotton now calls a political maneuver timed "to suppress gas prices ahead of the midterm elections."
Cotton also noted this wasn't the first time Democrats undermined the reserve. In 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and congressional Democrats blocked President Trump's bid to refill the SPR with $3 billion from a COVID-19 stimulus package moving through Congress. They stopped the refill. Then Biden drained what was left. Now they want Trump to open the spigot again.
Schumer himself said the reserve "exists for moments exactly like this."
So to be clear: Democrats blocked filling it, drained it for political cover, and now insist it be tapped once more because prices are high. The reserve exists for moments exactly like this, unless the moment involves actually keeping it full.
Cotton's letter doesn't stop at the drawdowns. He pointed to Biden's 2021 executive order halting new oil and gas leases on federal lands and offshore, arguing the administration "constrained domestic production while the administration was draining the reserve."
This is the core of the indictment. The Biden administration simultaneously:
Each decision compounded the last. Restricting production ensured less supply to offset the drawdown. Draining the reserve without replenishment ensured the country would face the next crisis with a diminished cushion. And now that crisis is here.
Cotton demanded that Wright answer how blocking the $3 billion oil purchase in 2020 and halting federal leases impacted current supply levels. These are not abstract questions. They have barrel counts attached to them.
The senator grounded his argument in the geopolitical reality that makes the SPR more than a budget line item. Cotton noted in his letter:
The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil transit choke point, with roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption moving through it in recent years.
Twenty percent of the world's petroleum liquids flowing through a single maritime corridor. That is exactly the kind of vulnerability the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed to hedge against. It was built for supply shocks, not midterm messaging.
That is precisely why the SPR must be treated as a strategic national security asset, not a political tool.
Cotton is making a distinction that Washington has spent the last several years blurring. A strategic reserve is insurance. You don't cash out your insurance policy to make the monthly budget look better and then demand someone else buy you a new one when the house catches fire.
The political irony here is sharp enough to cut. Congressional Democrats are now pressuring Trump to tap the SPR after oil prices surged. These are the same Democrats whose leader blocked a $3 billion replenishment effort. The same party whose president drew the reserve down by 180 million barrels. The same coalition that restricted the domestic production that could have softened the blow.
They emptied the strategic reserve. They blocked efforts to refill it. They choked off new production. And now they want the current administration to drain it further to clean up the mess they engineered.
This is not energy policy. It is a pattern. Use a national security asset for short-term political gain, leave the wreckage for the next administration, then blame that administration for not having enough reserves to deploy. The feedback loop is self-serving by design.
Cotton's letter forces the conversation back to where it belongs: accountability for the decisions that put the country in this position. The SPR sits nearly 300 million barrels below capacity. That gap has names attached to it.
Every barrel missing from that reserve is a barrel someone chose to spend, and someone else chose not to replace.
