Basically, his plan was to petition the Fed for releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve which was created with the intention of being able to release large quantities of heating oil to various commercial heating oil distribution entities when supply was dangerously low. The problem with that plan is that there really is no supply issue, there is plenty of supply in the commercial market, it's just expensive. That reserve should be maintained for cases of extreme supply emergency, especially now in a reality where Russia has made a point of showing their ability to cripple energy infrastructure, a la how they destroyed their own Nordstream pipeline. A lot of people doubt that Russia did it to their own pipeline, but it's really a classic Russian move of assymetric warfare.

1. That pipeline was never going to be serving Europe again as the war in Ukraine had pushed Europe to develop alternative supplies so that they didn't have to be beholden to Russian influences, so there was no real loss to themselves if they destroyed it.

2. They could use their own destruction of it as a false flag operation so that they could blame Ukraine for doing it to serve as war propaganda in their own domestic news agencies.

3. It served as a message to the rest of the world that they could covertly destroy other countries sub sea delivery systems if they wanted to at any time, so think carefully about supporting Ukraine unless you want to risk having your oil pipelines disrupted.

That is why we need to maintain those reserves more than ever. Instead, LePage was using the high prices and the existence of the reserve to fear monger that people would be freezing to death in their homes... Really, that would be an inappropriate use of that reserve.

"Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve

Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve

History

Former President Bill Clinton directed the emergency reserve of heating oil on July 10, 2000, when he directed then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to establish a two million barrel home heating oil component of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the Northeast. The intent was to create a buffer large enough to allow commercial companies to compensate for interruptions in supply during severe winter weather, but not so large as to dissuade the companies from maintaining stock levels sufficient to respond to routine weather events or to recognize that increasing prices are an indicator that more supply is needed. The reserve would give Northeast consumers supplemental supplies for approximately 10 days, the time required for ships to carry additional heating oil from the Gulf of Mexico to New York Harbor."