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White House Taps Oil Reserves

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    Is move politically motivated?

  • Duration 2:43
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This transcript is automatically generated

Triggered by word the Obama administration.

Is about to tap the -- reserve oil supply.

Chief political correspondent Carl Cameron has more on the plan.

And the reaction.

President Obama approved the release of thirty million barrels of oil from the US strategic petroleum reserve.

As part of the US role in a sixty million barrel released by the International Energy Agency.

In response to diminish supplies caused by the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East and Libya and we're very pleased that the president is taken this action.

How worried about the economy and their re elections Democrats hailed the move -- a much needed economic boost.

But house speaker John Boehner released a blistering statement accusing the president of playing 2012 politics.

With the oil that's -- in reserve for major emergencies since the 1970s quote.

The president is using a national security instrument to address his domestic political problems.

This action threatens our ability to respond to a genuine national security crisis and means we must ultimately find the resources to replenish the reserve.

At significant cost to taxpayers.

As senator mr.

Obama said the strategic petroleum reserve should be -- only for a quote cataclysmic event a terrorist attack.

Or serious Middle East supply disruption.

The last time the reserve was open was after Hurricane Katrina.

24 hours before the president opened the spigot this time his White House chief of staff made no mention of it in a speech but was clearly raising the economic and political -- We are in a crisis we're trying to get some people don't understand.

That this is a real crisis and the ways in which things happen in this town have got to be jump started based upon the difficulty were in.

Ironically retail gasoline prices have been dropping for six straight weeks to a national average of three dollars and 61 cents a gallon.

Oil prices dropped 5% today on word of the US tapping its petroleum reserves but also in part.

Because Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the US economy is recovering more slowly than expected.

There's little doubt the White House considers the weak economy a political crisis today's numbers remain daunting.

Unemployment at nine point 1% shows no sign of improving.

The Labor Department reported today that new applications for jobless benefits rose by 9000 last week.

The housing market remains the weakest economic sector the Commerce Department says new home sales fell two point 1% in May.

It takes 700000.

New homes sales a year to keep the US market healthy.

This year could be less than half that.

And backing out of the strategic petroleum reserve it holds -- 727.

Million barrels.

So the administration says using just thirty million is a drop in the bucket but that's the irony thirty million barrels is less than two days of the US consumption.

So the impact on the economy and the president's political standing isn't gonna last -- progress.

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