Joe Barton: “But the strategic petroleum reserve is a reserve that you take crude oil and store it so if we need it you bring it up…”

“But the strategic petroleum reserve is a reserve that you take crude oil and store it so if we need it you bring it up and transmit it to refineries to be refined into refined products. A strategic refinery reserve, as I understand it in this bill, you actually go out and build the refineries, and it is unclear to me whether you would operate them around the clock or just in some sort of an emergency. I do understand that you require the Secretary of Energy to transmit the plan. But if the Secretary of Energy did not want to operate them continuously, I guess he would have that authority in the plan to have them as a sort of ready reserve.”