Admittedly Clueless

My job is quite a distance from my home, so I'm keenly aware of gasoline prices. Thus, I didn't need the media to alert me that prices have been dropping. According to this article, prices have been dropping since last month both in the price of crude and the price of gasoline.

Why, then, is President Obama now releasing 30 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve? From what I read, 30 million barrels of crude oil is less than what we import in 3 days. Further, it appears that this oil is being added not to our available oil, but the the international pool of available oil. What's up with that?

Now, all accounts indicate that the news of this pitifully small, sadly late release has caused something like a 5% drop in oil prices, but, really, what's this all about? From what I heard on the news, experts expect that this move might drop the price at the pump perhaps a penny or two per gallon. As I've already indicated, the amount of oil made available is almost quite literally a drop in the bucket of world consumption. So what is really going on here? It's not likely to do any actual help. It's not being released for our needs, but for the world's needs. It comes after a month-long drop in oil prices while claiming that the Libya crisis (going on since March) has caused shortages. Seriously, does anyone have some idea of what could possibly be motivating this move?