Newswise — Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve H. Hanke, an economist and columnist for Forbes magazine, says the current record high price of oil could be lowered if President George W. Bush did what his father did a dozen years ago -- release oil from the nation's strategic reserves.
If reserves are released, the price of oil will drop, Hanke says, just as it did in January 1991 when President George H.W. Bush ordered a drawdown of the reserves. The price of a barrel of oil fell from $32.25 to $21.48 in one day, Hanke writes in his recent Forbes column.
"The lesson is clear," Hanke writes. "We have an oil weapon, too. The strategic reserve should be used to bloody OPEC's nose, not prop up a cartel."
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