WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s budget proposes to shut as soon as in a few months the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, which stores 1 million barrels of diesel and was designed to protect consumers.
The reserve, created in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton, holds enough for roughly 10 days of heating homes. It has not been tapped since 2012, when it provided fuel to emergency responders in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
The proceeds of a sale of the ultra-low sulfur diesel in fiscal year 2026 would go to U.S. deficit reduction, the proposal said. At current prices, revenues from a sale would be about $86 million, but closing the facility could save on maintenance costs.
U.S. budget proposals lay out an administration’s policies, and what lawmakers ultimately adopt often differs from White House requests.
Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden, had proposed in November, 2022 to expand the reserve as a protection against spikes in heating oil prices and inflation after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine boosted energy prices.
That plan, never put in place, would have funded purchases from the reserve from revenue from sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest emergency stockpile of crude oil.
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the proposal to close the heating oil reserve.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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