White House seeks greater power over emergency oil stocks

By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration wants greater authority from Congress to tap the emergency oil reserve to control spikes in global petroleum prices, seeking a more aggressive role for the 40-year-old stockpile. Authorized by Congress in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has long been a defensive weapon to protect the U.S. economy from interruptions in crude imports from petroleum-producing countries that are not always frien