President Joe Biden on Tuesday authorized the Department of Energy (DOE) to release 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserves, representing half of a coordinated 60-million-barrel release from International Energy Agency (IEA) member states. The move comes as part of an effort to stabilize oil markets amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions against Russia. Russia provides 10 percent of the global supply of natural gas and oil and roughly 40 percent of the European Union’s. The price of crude oil has been accelerating of late and on Tuesday reached more than $104 a barrel—the highest it’s been since 2014. The announcement to tap oil reserves came out of a meeting Tuesday of the 31 IEA member states that was chaired by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. An IEA release notes that global oil markets were already tight before Russia’s invasion, with heightened price …