By Coral Davenport, CQ Staff

The House and Senate defied the White House on Tuesday with bipartisan votes that would require a temporary halt to oil deposits into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The House bill (HR 6022), which passed, 385-25, would freeze oil shipments to the reserve while prices remain higher than $75 a barrel after deliveries already scheduled are completed.

Oil futures for June deliveries closed Tuesday at $125.80 a barrel in New York.

Earlier, senators voted, 97-1, to adopt an amendment to unrelated legislation (S 2284) overhauling the National Flood Insurance Program that also would temporarily suspend shipments to the reserve.

Republicans then objected to a request by Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., to call up a freestanding bill that contained a similar temporary halt. However, a spokeswoman for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., said McConnell would be comfortable with clearing the House measure for President Bush.

The White House opposes any suspension of shipments to the reserve. Bush says that such a step would have little or no impact on gasoline prices.

Democrats have long opposed pumping more oil into the reserve when gasoline prices are high, arguing that keeping the fuel on the market could ease some pain at the pump. Republicans once backed Bush on the issue, but many have shifted position as a result of record-high oil and gasoline prices, now topping $4 a gallon in some areas.

Lawmakers from both parties conceded that the move, which would free about 70,000 barrels a day, is only a modest, temporary measure that would reduce gasoline costs by a few pennies per gallon, and would not get at the root cause of high gasoline prices.

“While there is no guarantee that putting this oil onto the market rather than into the SPR will lower prices, even the modest step of suspending such acquisitions for the time being could potentially prick the speculative bubble now characterizing oil markets,” said House Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell , a Michigan Democrat.

One key Republican who changed her view is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who chairs the Republican Policy Committee.

“The SPR had 554 million barrels when President Bush took office and today it has over 701 million barrels,” Hutchison said during floor debate. “We are in an extreme circumstance, now that oil is around $120 a barrel. I support an immediate halt in the deposits of domestic crude into the SPR as we enter the busiest driving season of the year.”

The SPR provision was the only common element between a Republican energy package and a Democratic package of energy provisions (S 2991) that Reid is expected to attempt to bring to the floor before Memorial Day. Republicans are likely to block his effort to call up that package, which includes provisions the minority passionately opposes, such as a “windfall profits” tax on big oil companies.

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