Biden will tap oil reserves in the hope of pushing gasoline prices down.

Energy experts said the reserve issuance would hold more power if other countries, such as China, sell oil from their stockpiles. The International Energy Agency, an organization of more than 30 countries, will meet on Friday and may recommend other versions of national reserves.

Russian oil exports typically account for more than one in every 10 barrels the world consumes. The United States, Britain and Canada stopped importing Russian oil, and many oil companies and shippers in Europe voluntarily stopped buying Russian energy products. This has resulted in a deficit so far of about three million barrels per day.

The average price of regular gasoline in the United States is $4.23 a gallon, according to AAACar club. That’s the same as it was a week ago but it’s up 62 cents a gallon in the last month.

Oil prices fell this week after peace talks between Russia and Ukraine showed the first signs of progress. Energy traders are also concerned about the prospect of lower demand as China, the world’s largest oil importer, imposes lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

“The price effect is likely to be short-term,” David Goldwyn, who was a senior State Department official in the Obama administration, said of Biden’s announcement. “But part of the benefit of this release is that it will provide a bridge to when new physical supplies emerge online in the second half of this year from the United States, Canada, Brazil and other countries.”

Some environmentalists criticized the release of the reserve. “Putting more oil on the market is not the answer to our problem, it is the persistence of our problem,” said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund.

But Megan L. O’Sullivan, director of the Energy Geopolitics Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said releasing reserves to ease shortages would not jeopardize the transition to clean energy. “What he told us last month is that if there is no energy security today, the desire to take difficult steps on the path to transition will evaporate,” she said.