Bush signs law halting oil shipments to reserve

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite President George W. Bush opposing a bill to temporarily halt adding oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, on Monday he signed into law the measure Congress passed in an effort to lower gasoline prices.

The legislation forbids the Bush administration from adding to the stockpile until crude prices drop below $75 a barrel. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for delivery in June hit a record high of near $128 on Friday.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said earlier on Monday that Bush would sign the measure even though he believed it would do little to lower fuel prices.

"The president doesn't believe it will have a meaningful impact because it's been demonstrated in the past that it hasn't," Stanzel said. "But he's not going to stand in the way of this measure because Congress has said that they want to move forward with it."

The oil stockpile is already 97 percent full, holding almost 703 million barrels of crude at four underground storage sites in Texas and Louisiana. The government was adding roughly 70,000 barrels of oil a day.

The reserve was created by Congress after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo to ensure the United States has a cushion of crude to handle major supply disruptions.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by Christian Wiessner)