BATON ROUGE - Congressman Garret Graves announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Energy will use its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help alleviate the fuel crisis in Louisiana following Hurricane Ida.

Read the full statement below. 

U.S. Congressman Garret Graves (South Louisiana) requested immediate assistance to relieve fuel supply shortages in Louisiana and other areas of the Gulf Coast that were just hit by Hurricane Ida.

The U.S. Secretary of Energy just announced they will utilize the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to do so. This is a quick and appropriate solution to help address fuel shortages across South Louisiana.

“This is a great step forward in helping to address the closure of the Mississippi River, pipelines shutdown and power outages that are preventing the availability to gasoline to run live-saving generators and vehicles. The next step to this is getting generator or grid power to our refineries.”