WASHINGTON, Feb 26: Despite record crude oil prices above $100 a barrel, the US Energy Department told Congress on Tuesday it had no plans to stop adding about 70,000 barrels per day of oil to America’s emergency oil stockpile.

Katharine Fredriksen, who heads the department’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, told the Senate Energy Committee that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve should reach a record 700.7 million barrels of oil by the end of March.

Many energy experts and US lawmakers are against boosting the emergency oil stockpile at this time, saying taking oil off the market pushes crude prices higher.

Democrat Jeff Bingaman, who chairs the Senate energy panel, said the government should actually withdraw oil from the stockpile to put more supplies in the market.

“As we face the threat that Venezuela might suspend oil shipments to the United States, it is more appropriate in my view to consider releasing the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) rather than filling it,” he said.

However, Fredriksen said the amount of oil going into the reserve was less than one-tenth of one per cent of the 85 million barrels of crude consumed daily around the globe.

“The modest fill rate does not put undue pressure on markets,” she told lawmakers. “It’s a minimal amount of oil.” “I think that’s nuts, frankly,” said Democrat Byron Dorgan of putting more oil in the reserve when prices are so high.

Frank Verrastro, energy expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Bush administration’s withdrawal of oil from a tight market encourages and emboldens traders and speculators to talk up oil prices without fear of reprisal.

He said the administration’s insistence on continuing to fill the SPR “severely undermined” US appeals for Opec to ramp up oil output.

Legislation pending in the Senate, which was co-sponsored by Dorgan and Bingaman, would bar the department from adding oil to the reserve this year, unless the price of crude fell below $50 a barrel, a price level not expected any time soon by most energy experts.—Reuters