WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday began accepting requests for crude oil to replenish the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPPR).

"We are committed to moving quickly to implement President Bush's directive to strengthen the nation's strategic energy reserve and ensure our nation's energy security," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement.

The government plans to pay suppliers by reducing the size of their payments for offshore development - or, more precisely, by allowing these payments to be made in kind rather than in cash. The FSR is expected to receive up to 60,000 barrels of crude oil daily from April 1, 2002, to April 30, 2003. In total, oil producers must supply 22 million barrels of oil. Bids from oil companies are accepted until February 5.

As a rule, oil produced on the basis of leases of federal offshore fields is inferior in quality to that sent to the FSR, and taking this into account, the actual volume of deliveries within the framework of this project may be less than 22 million barrels.

The FSR currently holds 550 million barrels of crude oil. In November, Bush announced a program to increase the reserve to its maximum possible size of 700 million barrels. Through measures such as in-kind payments for oil company royalties and a crude swap program, the strategic reserve will grow to 592 million barrels by early 2003.

Dismissing speculation in the media on Tuesday, Energy Department spokesman Drew Malcom said the government has no immediate plans to buy oil for the Federal Reserve with cash.

The amount of oil supplied by companies as payments for the development of federal deposits may be increased by the government this year compared to the original plan. In this case, the rate of replenishment of the FSR could reach 130,000 barrels per day by October, although the details of this plan are not yet known.

The project will supply oil to three of the four storage facilities that make up the FSR system in Texas and Louisiana, Malcolm said.

The FSR filling schedule this year provides for the delivery of 1.9 million barrels of oil in February, 3.2 million in April (no deliveries are planned for March), 4 million in May, 3.5 million in June, 3 million in July, 800,000 in August, 4.6 million in September, 2.9 million in October, 3.4 million in November and 1.7 million in December.

Petroleum Argus experts note that the increase in strategic reserves planned by the Washington administration is extremely insignificant to seriously affect the market. For comparison: the volume that the Americans are going to additionally pump into storage facilities in 13 months is exported through Novorossiysk in less than a month. Thus, this factor can only have a psychological impact on the price of oil, and even then, among other positive news, the agency believes. (DJ, 22. 01. 2002)

The US will be flooded with oil