Topping Off

HEADNOTE

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve keeps foreign oil suppliers from putting the United States over a barrel.

In late January, a barge moving through the Sabine Neches Ship Channel along the Gulf of Mexico near

the TexasLouisiana border spilled 94 concrete pilings into the waterway, closing down traffic to deep-draft vessels. For Total Petrochemicals USA Inc., the accident might have been financially disastrous. The company's refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, processes 240,000 barrels of crude oil per day-oil that's delivered to the company's facilities through the channel. But no such disaster occurred. Instead, Energy secretary Samuel W. Bodman approved an emergency loan of 871,000 barrels of crude oil to the company from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. "In providing this loan, the SPR is doing exactly what it was intended to do-mitigate any supply disruption and minimize, to the extent possible, the effect any disruption would have on the American people," Bodman said in a January statement.