> However, because the price of gasoline depends largely on the cost of crude oil, which is mostly based on global supply and demand, experts told us that oil sold from the reserve does not need to stay in the U.S. to bring down gasoline prices.
> For each sale, the Energy Department announces the type and amount of oil from the four SPR sites that will be auctioned in a competitive bidding process. By law, the contracts are awarded to the companies that make the highest bids, and any company that is registered in the SPR’s Crude Oil Sales Offer Program is eligible to make an offer.
> Finley of the Baker Institute said that American refiners have to determine if they can use the reserve oil that will be released. If not, it may be of use abroad.
> “Each individual refinery is optimized for its marketplace and is built to run optimally on a certain type of crude oil and to produce a certain mix of gasoline and diesel fuel,” he told us. “And so it may be that the type of oil being offered from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve doesn’t perfectly match what the U.S. refiners are looking for and it might be a better match for the specific requirements of refiners elsewhere.” Kilian made a similar point. “If the oil released is medium sour, for example, a U.S. refiner specializing in light sweet crude would not be interested,” he explained. “There may be spare capacity at a refinery in Europe, however, that specializes in processing medium sour crude, so trade makes sense.”
US refineries are already operating essentially at capacity [2] for various reasons. So no matter what, the crude oil that gets released that can't be refined here has to be exported.
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/07/u-s-selling-oil-from-the-s...
[2] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg...