Selling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Make Any Sense or Cents

This week the US Senate voted to sell some of the oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and use the money for homeland security programs. Members of Congress in both houses debated the issue and discussed whether oil in the ground is more important than cash in the bank. The current reserves hold 648 million barrels of oil in salt domes offshore from the US Gulf. The total capacity is 700 million barrels. What would happen if our oil imports from one source or another were cut off?