Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Re "Use the Oil Reserve as a Lever," editorial, March 7: It makes as much sense to spend oil reserves, which are set aside for national emergencies, to drive down gasoline prices as it does to spend savings set aside for a child's education to drive down the cost of clothing. A better way would be to leave the reserves/savings where they are and quit buying. W. DAVID BAIRD Malibu If you want to drop the price of a gallon of gasoline immediately, write an editorial urging the administrations of President Clinton and Gov. Gray Davis to send legislation to our legislative branches suspending the federal and state taxes on a gallon of gasoline.

The White House is unlikely to adopt a proposal to put millions of barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve on the market through an oil swap with energy companies, a U.S. official said. An Energy Department official said Sunday that the department was pursuing the plan, but the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that no formal proposal had been received.

The U.S. Energy Department has proposed putting millions of barrels of crude oil from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve on the market through oil swaps with energy companies, a government official said Sunday. While the long-term goal of the plan is to put more oil back into the reserve, a short-term side effect of the additional supplies from the proposed swap could be to lower crude oil prices, which have recently hit nine-year highs, said the official, who asked not to be named.

The United States must reduce its dependence on foreign oil in response to growing international terrorism, new Energy Secretary Bill Richardson warned on his first day on the job. The United States imports about half the oil it consumes, and foreign oil shipments are expected to increase as American crude production drops. Richardson said he wants to reverse that trend. "I would like more emphasis in . . . the development of resources here," he told reporters.

Using deep underground salt domes along the Gulf Coast, an energy-shocked Uncle Sam began to squirrel away millions of barrels of crude oil in the 1970s as "doomsday insurance" against a cutoff of oil imports. But today, Democrats and Republicans alike have begun to treat the precious cache of crude--known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--as a sort of fiscal cookie jar.

President Clinton's decision to release 12 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over a five-month period may sound like a welcome relief to consumers, who have seen the price of gasoline rise to as much as $2 a gallon. The extra supply is meant to force prices downward, but some indicators make that prospect seem unlikely.

In May, 1992, a security guard at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on Weeks Island, a coastal finger off South Louisiana, walked into sinking soil. He pulled himself out, but govern ment officials found themselves in a $100-million quagmire. That's the estimated cost, according to Department of Energy and reserve officials, of relocating 73 million barrels of oil stored in a converted salt mine to other sites along the Louisiana-Texas coast.

The Energy Department's offering of crude oil from the nation's strategic stockpile was oversubscribed, with bids for much more oil than was put on the market, the government said Monday night. Twenty-six companies submitted bids totaling nearly 44.81 million barrels of oil, the Energy Department said. President Bush on Jan. 16 ordered 33.75 million barrels of oil put on the market as part of a release of inventories coordinated with allies. The department offered 11.

As the first bombs fell on Baghdad, the reaction in oil markets worldwide was swift and dramatic Wednesday evening, with prices rising as much as $6 a barrel within minutes of the first news reports, then falling rapidly, in some cases below pre-attack levels, traders said. Prices fell as traders believed that allied forces had scored a major blow to Iraq and diminished the threat of disrupted oil supplies--at least for now. Prices also plummeted on news that President Bush had ordered a 1.