WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The White House on Monday proposed selling ${esc.dollar}500 million worth of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help cover the costs of managing the emergency stockpile.
The proposal was included in the White House's budget sent to Congress to pay for government programs for the 2012 spending year, which begins on Oct. 1. The reserve was created in the mid 1970s after the Arab oil embargo and currently holds 726.6 million barrels of crude at four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana.
The White House did not say how many barrels of reserve oil it planned to sell, but it said it would be a "small amount" of the stockpile's total holdings. At a current market price of ${esc.dollar}86 a barrel for U.S. oil, the administration would need to sell about 5.8 million barrels to raise ${esc.dollar}500 million.
(Reporting by Tom Doggett, Editing by Sandra Maler)
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