Then last week, the world’s consumer nations announced they were releasing oil from their strategic stockpiles to push the price down, and it did go down—at least for the moment. A total of 2 million barrels a day (half from the United States) will be sold from stockpiles for the next 30 days. Whether any more will be sold after that will be decided later. The sell-off is intended to make up for the loss of output from Libya, Yemen and Syria, where the Arab Spring has crimped production.