Almost on cue, this NY Times article reports on Congressional Democrats calling for the Bush Administration to use the Strategic Oil Reserve to increase supplies of oil in the economy to ease the recent spike in energy prices. On a more thoughtful note, Arthur Kling over at EconLog points us to a Allan Sloan’s better analysis in this Washington Post article:

[T]he $41.55 price for oil today is much higher than the $35.50 it costs for a barrel to be delivered next year. This disparity inspired Loews chief executive Jim Tisch, whose company has extensive energy holdings and plays financial markets like a violin, to propose a trade. Let’s sell oil out of the reserve, he says — not for money, but for oil to be delivered next year. We could get seven barrels next year for six today. We’re now buying 160,000 barrels a day for the reserve, which has 660 million barrels. But by trading rather than buying, we’d save taxpayer dollars, reduce the demand that’s driving up prices today, and spook the speculators. I love it.

Meanwhile, this WaPo article indicates that the amount of oil going into the reserve amounts to less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the world supply, which is too small to have any more than a two to five cent price per gallon effect if the government’s current “buy” policy were changed.