In addition, curbing production now would amount to giving up market share, a concept that has caused friction between Saudi Arabia and fellow heavyweights Russia and the United Arab Emirates in the past couple of years.

Strategic stocks are, of course, more finite than petro-state oil reserves. So even if the US and others manage to cool prices, the effect would be short-lived. The stocks would need to be replenished at some point, creating more oil demand — and upward price pressure — down the road. Indeed, most of the US release consists of short-term exchanges that will be replaced.

Yet the US has room to be more aggressive if it wishes. It has flirted off and on with being a net exporter of oil since late 2019, including so far this month. It remains a large importer of crude oil (net exports are weighted to refined products), but even crude net imports average only around 2-4 million barrels a day. On that basis, the SPR currently covers more than six months worth of net imports, far more than needed.

Japan, one of the other countries releasing barrels, also holds more than 200 days worth of imports, although that also includes commercial inventories.

China is involved, too, which represents something of a diplomatic coup for Biden given the country’s importance as a customer for OPEC+ and its tense relations with the US on nearly all other fronts. China, capitalising on that importance, has spent the past decade or so building both strategic and commercial reserves, and it adjusts them to either take advantage of low oil prices or try to tame rallies.

Biden’s move, explicitly targeting oil prices rather than a specific emergency, hews more to Beijing’s trading model. Historically, the US SPR has been “dead oil,” removed from the market and unlikely to be used except in the most extreme circumstances. If this release heralds a more interventionist approach, that would represent a important change in the oil market — and a signal that the old preoccupation with scarcity, rooted in the 1970s supply shocks, is slipping away.

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For American oil producers, the release shouldn’t matter much; the longer-dated futures used for hedging purposes are less likely to be affected. Surveying 43 large exploration and production companies, Bernstein Research’s Bob Brackett calculates that, with oil averaging $US71 in the third quarter, they generated almost $US23 of cash flow per barrel-equivalent, of which only a third went on capital expenditure. The oil price isn’t what’s holding back shale production. It’s the deficit of trust with investors.

Biden’s move will probably have only a temporary effect of stalling momentum in oil prices. But in political terms, he is focused on the short term. The threat from OPEC+ is undermined by its own insouciance these past few months. Retaliation would only play into Biden’s hands. After all, as much as Americans blame pump prices on the sitting president, they’re no fans of OPEC either.