In late June, the US offered 30.6 million barrels of crude from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves. The auction drew high bids from 15 companies who bought the oil and then announced plans to move the oil from the secured sites to refineries in the US.The devil is in the details and it's the way the oil is being moved that has raised the ire of US Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and a bipartisan group of members of Congress.Landrieu said the Obama administration, in its haste to allow the top bidders to move the oil to refineries, have violated the 90-year-old Jones Act designed to protect US merchant mariners.The federal government, she said, has issued 46 waivers to the Jones Act-allowing foreign-flagged vessels to transport the oil when US-flag tankers were available.
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