U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve faces stress as emergency releases strain old infrastructure
President Donald Trump in March ordered the release of 172 million barrels from the SPR as Iran choked off oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz,...
Key points
- President Donald Trump in March ordered the release of 172 million barrels from the SPR as Iran choked off oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, triggering the largest supply disruption in history.
- Government inventories fell last week by 3.7 million barrels to a total of about 308 million barrels, according to the Energy Department.
- The SPR will fall to about 243 million barrels when Trump's release is fully executed, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
- The emergency stockpile has an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels, according to the Department of Energy.
What happened
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President Donald Trump in March ordered the release of 172 million barrels from the SPR as Iran choked off oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, triggering the largest supply disruption in history. Government inventories fell last week by 3.7 million barrels to a total of about 308 million barrels, according to the Energy Department. The SPR will fall to about 243 million barrels when Trump's release is fully executed, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. The emergency stockpile has an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels, according to the Department of Energy. The federal auditors found that more than a quarter of the SPR "was not available for drawdown due to a combination of construction outages and cavern outages." This implies that a minimum of 103 million barrels in the SPR today are not deployable, according to a July analysis by Rapidan Energy. President Joe Biden ordered 180 million barrels released in response to the war in Europe, the largest release in SPR history.