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U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1982

100 points thelastgallon 1 hour ago 103 comments

brightball 1 hour ago | parent

Chart of strategic reserve levels since 1982, for context

https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...

Avicebron 54 minutes ago | parent

Yikes.

King-Aaron 49 minutes ago | parent

That is just mind boggling.

mahboi 39 minutes ago | parent

Beware the Y axis not starting at 0. But it's still an insane drop.

  Highcharts.charts.forEach(chart => { if (chart) chart.yAxis.forEach(axis => axis.update({ min: 0 })); });

hedora 19 minutes ago | parent

Though note that, for some reason, the last 250M barrels are not physically extractable from the SPR, and the red line has dropped to 284M.

unethical_ban 12 minutes ago | parent

Source on that? Not doubting, just curious. If true that explains the Y axis starting there.

hedora 8 minutes ago | parent

It’s in the article. They link to something explaining the range.

At first I thought that’s why the graph zeros where it does, but it’s Y axis starts at 200M.

zdragnar 10 minutes ago | parent

The "for some reason" is that the caverns the oil is stored in are expected to become geologically unstable if they are emptied below a certain threshold. Extract below the 250 mark, and run the risk that they will collapse and cannot be refilled.

pstuart 29 minutes ago | parent

It looks like it started to plummet in April 2022, which was on Biden's watch (disclaimer: I voted for him). It apparently was in response to supply chain shocks spiking oil prices due to the start of the war in Ukraine.

Having the AI summarize the pros and cons of that action has valid points on both sides. But in his defense, that particular war was not of our doing, unlike the current war with Iran which was initiated impulsively.

Gigachad 26 minutes ago | parent

Trump spoke about this publicly, promising he would "fill the reserves right up to the top", then when in power, didn't do that but instead started a war with Iran while the reserves were still low.

It's mind boggling how stupid it all is.

Insanity 18 minutes ago | parent

:s/it all/he

hadlock 20 minutes ago | parent

Selling oil out of the SPR is the new One Weird Trick Military Planners Hate! Biden was a generally fine president, but pulling oil out of the SPR to balance the budget was an extremely ugly way to do it, and hopefully that loophole gets plugged going forward.

hedora 17 minutes ago | parent

Hopefully, it hits effective zero, and people start buying EVs.

As a bonus, maybe the military will stop wasting gasoline to murder civilians, since we’ve already established they value oil over absolutely everything else, including human life.

oyashirochama 6 minutes ago | parent

EVs are just as toxic due to mining techniques used at the moment, and with no effective way to recycle batteries even if they last longer than expected they aren't really a way forward completely, and baseload electricity still relies on oil and natural gas since most countries have for some reason pushed away from Nuclear as a long term non-renewable (it IS technically not renewable).

pstuart 5 minutes ago | parent

I get your point and it's clear that sticks seem to be more effective than carrots, but our supply chains are not electrified and that will take time, in the meantime this pain will propagate widely.

not2b 9 minutes ago | parent

That isn't why he did it, it was not "to balance the budget". It was to make up for the panic after Putin invaded Ukraine. US gasoline prices soared, going up to $4.84 per gallon in June 2022. Releasing the oil caused it to drop. It wasn't given away, it was sold. The reserve was on the way back up in 2024, through when Biden left office. Furthermore, the government turned a large profit: they sold oil when it soared in price, and bought it back at a lower price.

tehjoker 4 minutes ago | parent

Biden supplied the genocide in Gaza and allowed 820k Americans to perish from COVID-19. Not a fine President.

partiallypro 14 minutes ago | parent

> that particular war was not of our doing

Well... arguably it is partially our doing. Not for the reason's Tucker Carlson & Russia say, but that Obama and later Biden totally sat on their laurels after the Crimean invasion, totally paralyzed by fear of escalation and political fallout.

safety1st 28 minutes ago | parent

The counterpoint is that the US is producing more crude domestically than ever with more efficient drilling technology:

https://www.oilmonster.com/article/more-productive-wells-spu...

Insofar as I can tell what's really reflected here is a difference between Democrat and Republican policy positions. The Democrats want to minimize domestic environmental impact and be a net oil importer. Let someone else handle the dirty work of drilling. The Republicans are less concerned with the environmental impact and want to increase exports, oil jobs and economic sovereignty. With higher domestic production and less dependence on foreign states, such a large petroleum reserve is unnecessary.

I prefer the Republican position. It sucks to harm the environment. But it sucks more to enable some of the regimes we import oil from. They frequently are not close allies. We frequently end up immersing ourself in wars and other entanglements over this foreign oil. You want to stop the wars, you have to stop the dependence on imported oil. (To be clear I'm not arguing that Republicans will start less wars, or are a more moral party. I am arguing in favor of domestic oil production because it removes a justification for war.)

The Democratic position exports the moral hazard to a place where Americans don't see it. Takes it out of their backyard. But frankly that is an immoral approach which both parties have taken repeatedly and it has undermined the health of the nation. The other case where this takes place at an absolutely massive scale is exporting certain types of jobs to other countries where labor standards are lax, and where slave labor takes place. People out there killed themselves while making iPhone or your shoes because the working conditions in those countries were so horrible. I am willing to pay a little more for shoes and buy a little bit fewer luxury goods so that I don't enable slave labor. Move the jobs back onshore where we can regulate the well being of the workers. We can't control it if it's in another country.

jmtulloss 12 minutes ago | parent

Your position appears to be based on crude production and drawing an equivalency between Middle East crude and US crude. They are unfortunately not equivalent. I agree that it’s amazing that the US doesn’t wholly depend on the Mideast for oil, but until we can process our own crude as cheaply as Mideast crude can be processed, strife in the Middle East will still push energy prices up.

NewJazz 10 minutes ago | parent

The primary Democratic position is demand reduction, not importing. Also plenty of democrats have allowed drillibng and pipelines.

rkagerer 10 minutes ago | parent

Whether or not I agree with your views, I thought your comment was thoughtfully constructed and am not sure why it's being downvoted.

kalleboo 9 minutes ago | parent

There is no political strategy story to be read into the drawdown of the SPR. Biden ("the democrats") drew it down by an even larger amount right after the invasion of Ukraine to stabilize prices, and now before it recovered Trump is drawing it down even further to stabilize prices from his new war.

getlawgdon 9 minutes ago | parent

This is not really supported by energy data. Under Biden/Harris, US crude production hit multiple consecutive all time highs and made the country a net exporter since 2020. In my world, that's the opposite of "minimizing domestic drilling." And producing oil doesn't prevent foreign wars; oil is a global commodity, energy markets are subject to global pricing events and disruptions anywhere drive up fuel prices in the US. Prices at the pump here don't care where crude was pumped. And the strange connection you draw between energy policy/oil reserves and offshore factory conditions conflates drastically different economic drivers. There is a real moral conversation to be had here about supply chain ethics but it doesn't get connected this way. This is a really shallow, cliche framing about [drilling vs importing] rather than [fossil fuel dominance vs clean energy transition], and drawing a preference to a party based on a faulty view of those is, disappointingly, Peak Political Affiliation 2026.

Let's also not pretend that current administration's insane military campaign to disrupt oil supply and markets, and how helpful that is to, I don't know, say, Russia.

tharmas 8 minutes ago | parent

Isn't US domestic oil exported to EU and others because its medium to light crude which US refineries are not calibrated for? Its my understanding US refineries are calibrated to refine Heavy crude which comes mainly from Canada and some from Venezuela.

conception 8 minutes ago | parent

If the Republicans actually had that position instead of being funded heavily by oil money they would be #1 Super Top Solar/Green energy party because that is the path to energy independence and to truly reduce the influence of OPEC - even outside of the fact that peak oil is over and it will continue to get more and more expensive to pull oil out of the earth. But they’re not because your assumptions are misplaced.

margalabargala 7 minutes ago | parent

I don't think your interpretation of Democrat policies is correct. I've seen nothing regarding a desire to import oil rather than produce it domestically, something that is fundamentally different from declining to expand domestic production (we are already a net exporter after all).

The democrat position is more of, move off of oil to electrification, such that despite no expansion we never have to import, while simultaneously reducing that domestic impact.

andriy_koval 47 minutes ago | parent

looks like gasoline will skyrocket very soon very badly..

conductr 23 minutes ago | parent

As has been predicted for months, I don’t recall where i read it but November has been in my brain for when this crisis is going to start.

jimt1234 4 minutes ago | parent

Wrong. Dear Leader says gas prices will come down just after the election, when the US wins the war with Iran...for the 30th time.

bix6 45 minutes ago | parent

So seriously, what is the administrations intention here? They’ve used all the missiles and drained all the gas. Are they trying to get the U.S. invaded?

toomuchtodo 44 minutes ago | parent

Keep fuel prices low enough using the SPR to try to not lose at midterms. They don’t care what happens after, just as they don’t care about their constituents losing their Medicaid.

The cost of putting unsophisticated grifters in the ultimate position of power.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Green New Deal via incompetence)

mahboi 41 minutes ago | parent

Shouldn't they at least care about the presidential election 2 years after that?

toomuchtodo 39 minutes ago | parent

Why? He can’t run again or will die of natural causes, and the cult support goes with him when he goes.

https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608

> If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it. —- Lindsey Graham, May 3, 2016

mahboi 37 minutes ago | parent

I meant the Republican Party should care. I get why Trump doesn't.

Barrin92 24 minutes ago | parent

most of them have been replaced, or are threatened to be replaced if they don't tow the party line.

It's not a traditional party in the American sense any more, there's no real policy making behind the scenes, it's basically the Trump family enriching itself and a rabid base enabling it. The institutional part that supposed to be the brain of the whole operation has left the building

bawolff 36 minutes ago | parent

The people in his admin certainly want to. It seems like Vance and Rubio are already subtley trying to position themselves for eventually running.

autoexec 27 minutes ago | parent

I don't share your optimism. I mean, yeah, he's doing to die soon, but his followers will just be suckered by the next con man who follows his playbook.

rootusrootus 14 minutes ago | parent

There have been a number of people who've tried to play some version of the Trump game. For whatever reason, he's the only one who ever got it to work. My theory is that it is because he has been a media presence, for better and worse, since the 1980s. Real estate, WWF, casinos, movies, reality TV, so much constant exposure. He's like the embodiment of 'no such thing as bad press'.

rectang 30 minutes ago | parent

There have been Republican elected representatives who have confronted Trump. With very few exceptions, they have gone down to defeat in subsequent Republican primary elections.

The Republican electorate will not stand for Trump being constrained or criticized by Republicans. That's why there are almost no remaining Republican elected officials who are willing to confront the Trump administration aside from a handful of lame ducks like Tillis and Massie.

Functionally, the Republican congress is unable to hold the Trump administration to account, because Republican voters have ensured that it cannot. The only way Trump will ever be constrained is via Democrats.

parineum 10 minutes ago | parent

Trump's influence has been fading and history shows he'll have practically none as a lame duck. The spell is breaking. As they say, at first gradually then all at once.

platevoltage 28 minutes ago | parent

At this point I think they're planning on letting Democrats sweep the midterms, having things get even worse over the next 2 years, which is inevitable, and blaming the entire thing on Democratic obstruction. Their voters are dumb enough to believe it.

kraken_cult 40 minutes ago | parent

They aren't winning the midterms with this. Hopefully the grifter hopefuls will take the lesson to heart.

bawolff 38 minutes ago | parent

If you want to be unreasonably sympathetic to the trump admin, they could be assuming that iran et al are trying to hold out until the election on the belief that that might change something (see also the timing of houthi offensive and attacks on saudi arabia), and that if trump get over the hump of the election, iran no longer has a way to affect anything short term and will throw in the towel as they lack the ability to hold out long term.

Personally i think trump does not have a plan, but if you tried to sanewash it, i think that is the best rationale i've been able to find.

nl 29 minutes ago | parent

I think the general interpretation that both sides think something will change after the midterms is reasonable.

But

> Iran et al are trying to hold out until the election

> [Iran will] throw in the towel as they lack the ability to hold out long term

is something that I don't think even the most thoughtless parts of the administration really think right?

It's obvious that Iran is winning, not close to throwing in the towel. The US is reduced to trying to get the Straights of Hormuz open without paying a toll to Iran, which is a worse position than the US was in at the start of the war.

consensus1 17 minutes ago | parent

That is not at all obvious. Iran's Hormuz leverage has proven much less effective than they had originally hoped for and now they are feeling the economic cost of the decision. The SPR is drawing at a rate of 400K bbl/wk over the past few weeks. That's not great, but very far from catastrophic and is sustainable for years at current level of 285 mmbbl. It was recently Iran that tried to get the US back to the negotiating table, not the other way around.

bawolff 14 minutes ago | parent

Its not obvious.

To be clear, im not predicting an imminent collapse.

However, countries win wars by projecting strength. Sometimes that is true, and sometimes that is bluffing. It is extremely hard to tell which is which from the outside.

We do know that Iran was looking shakey prior to this war, and that this war has taken a significant toll, especially economically.

Will that translate to something? idk. In many ways you would think that if it was going to, it would already have happened.

However i think sometimes westerners have a very america centric perspective. The costs being suffered here are pretty low for america. Price at the pump is slightly higher. America used up some of its interceptors. That is a pretty low cost. Sure american allies are getting pounded, which has long term impacts, but that is not something ordinary americans will feel. On the other hand Iranians are feeling huge costs, and the longer it goes on, the worse their bargaining position gets (e.g. people frak more, pipelines get built etc).

All this to say, i dont know what is going to happen, but the Iranian position is fragile, and gets more fragile with time. Anything could happen.

saturn8601 14 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't necessarily say Iran is walking away unscathed. From what I've read on Reuters and other places, they're having serious economic problems due to this blockade. They've had to start reducing subsidies for gas, and they deliberately started with the heaviest users because they're worried that their citizens are going to reach a point where they're going to snap.

Again, we don't really know all the facts on the ground, and we don't know what the breaking point is, but this is partly the U.S.'s strategy here. Seems like it is producing results because Iran is open to more negotiation as these past few weeks have passed. Why would they do this if they were walking away unscathed and winning?

On the flip side, though, I do concede that the US people have just not borne the brunt of the disaster yet. When that happens, they snap like a twig, only because they didn't support this war to begin with. Support was at a record low when the war began and continued to drop to this day.

In the end Iran's goal seems more attainable: Make this so painful for the US that they do not dare try this again for a long time if ever.

The US's goal was topple the regime, install their puppet and acquire the nuclear material. Now its just getting back to the JCPOA or something like it. Not good enough for Iran. They want to make sure this stops for good.

idiotsecant 38 minutes ago | parent

SPR cannot meaningfully lower prices at the pump. It's simply not big enough. The only thing that does that is an end to the war.

toomuchtodo 36 minutes ago | parent

Certainly, just like the Treasury is attempting to manipulate debt costs with their bond market interventions. Both are illusions of effort, both ineffective.

“Extend and pretend.” Luckily, we’re almost out of runway, both with oil and the bond market. Natural consequences are required to encourage improved outcomes.

(The war will not end until Iran decides to end it, just as Ukraine can lob drones at Russian refineries and oil terminals forever)

hedora 29 minutes ago | parent

Iran and the Houthis both have to stop the war before all the Middle East supply chains start turning back on.

The US is winning on so many fronts these days, it’s getting hard to track. /s

bawolff 33 minutes ago | parent

Also price of oil isn't the only factor. Refineries going offline is a major factor in price at the pump, and there are a lot of refineries in the middle east. Its not just the price of unrefined oil.

King-Aaron 34 minutes ago | parent

Project 2025 fairly implicitly stated that the idea was to scuttle trust in the US government so badly that there would be a case for private equity to swoop in and save the day. That's what you're seeing.

phendrenad2 14 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

parineum 13 minutes ago | parent

Project 2025 can be anything you want it to be.

Boxxed 5 minutes ago | parent

If only

treis 29 minutes ago | parent

Most of the draw down was after Russia invaded Ukraine. This drawdown is a swap of 1 barrel now for 1.25 barrels later. So the intention is to keep prices down now and get more oil back later for "free".

partiallypro 21 minutes ago | parent

It's actually shocking that so many comments don't know that the biggest draw -by far- happened under the Biden administration largely as a result of the Ukrainian War. In 2020 when the SPR wasn't full and oil was literally negative, Congress blocked the administration from buying oil to fill it. Instead they used the SPR for short term storage for oil companies (which was not the administration's original proposal.)

I get the Iran war part (though the bigger issue there is middle distillerates rather then crude atm), but people were screaming about the SPR drawdown, and lack of buying for 4 years before Trump ever got back into office; and it fell completely on deaf ears.

edg5000 19 minutes ago | parent

> In 2020 when the SPR wasn't full and oil was literally negative, Congress blocked the administration from buying oil to fill it

Why???

jasonjayr 12 minutes ago | parent

IIRC Congress was blocking anything Biden or the opposing party wanted to put in place that they had the power to block, and refusing any compromise.

dyauspitr 44 minutes ago | parent

They’ve ruined us.

CamperBob2 42 minutes ago | parent

He is indistinguishable from an attack by hostile foreign agents. A very successful attack.

za3faran 44 minutes ago | parent

Brought to you by the epestein war

Ifkaluva 37 minutes ago | parent

And winter is coming

gpt5 33 minutes ago | parent

Crude oil demand peaks in summer, not winter

drTobiasFunke 37 minutes ago | parent

Thos year’s drop is terrible, but we know the reason. Anybody know why the big drop in 2021-22?

vkou 26 minutes ago | parent

Trump got all the oil producers together in a room and put together a deal to restrict oil production during COVID.

This, naturally, resulted in higher oil prices, which the Republican party blamed Biden for.

They truly have no shame.

edg5000 20 minutes ago | parent

But why?

parineum 14 minutes ago | parent

Simple, he made it up.

nl 4 minutes ago | parent

This is not true. Don't make things up.

From 2015 the SDR was authorized to sell $2 billion worth of oil during FY2017–2020 and use the proceeds for infrastructure upgrades and life-extension work at the reserve's aging storage facilities.

There were also sales between 5 and 10M barrels a year to fund the "21st Century Cures Act" (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/25/5031763...)

The background to this was the increased domestic oil production which made the SDA seem less necessary.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29692

rootusrootus 24 minutes ago | parent

Same reason as today, trying to counter high energy prices.

atmavatar 18 minutes ago | parent

It looks like there was a slow drop-off from about 2017 onward. The big drop started early 2022, likely related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

nl 14 minutes ago | parent

The Biden administration (and other countries around the world in the International Energy Agency) released reserves to try to stabilize the spikes in prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

> On March 1, 2022, Secretary Granholm announced that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency (IEA) would release a total of 60 million barrels of oil onto the world market. [snip] In total, DOE released 180 million barrels of crude oil into the market.

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/opr/history-spr-releases (look at 2022 IEA Coordinate Release)

davidw 36 minutes ago | parent

I am frankly a bit bewildered by all this. The US administration lies and lies. The Iranians lie. Doomers keep talking about how gas prices will skyrocket "in two weeks". Occasionally the "everything is fine, nothing to see here" folks wheel out some journalist saying there will be a peace deal any day now.

It's pretty difficult to figure out what the reality is besides "not good".

hedora 31 minutes ago | parent

Diesel touched $8.99/gal this week. I want to know what happens when the sign runs out of digits at $10.

Is it tied to the cash register? Will the pumps run out of digits too? Will they still be able to sell gas?

One thing I can say: My F150 won’t care. It runs off solar.

ghurtado 21 minutes ago | parent

> . I want to know what happens when the sign runs out of digits at $10.

If you liked Y2K, you're gonna love 2.2f!

BugsJustFindMe 13 minutes ago | parent

You mean 2.3. Gas prices all go down to tenths of a penny.

YZF 6 minutes ago | parent

In Canada gas is priced per liter. Long ago it was under $1.00 and everyone was wondering what will happen when the price goes above a dollar. Then the signs could only do up to 1.99. Then it went over $2. Don't worry. They'll change the signs and the pumps and everything. Cost of doing business.

Fun fact. Oil and gas prices aren't coupled as much as people think they are. I think these days about 50% of the cost is the oil. When oil goes up it's an excuse to raise prices. When oil price goes down nobody lowers gas prices. There's refining costs, distribution costs, taxes, and oh, let's not forget - PROFIT! (about 20%-30%, mostly for the oil companies, not the gas stations that have pretty low margins). Another thing to consider is that the oil refined into the gasoline you're buying at the pump was not bought at today's future contract prices. You can bet your *%# that the refineries are hedging and trying to keep their costs as low as possible while selling to you as high as possible. Their profit skyrockets when oil goes high. This also influences how much reserves and storage are available. The reserves, oil in transit, and other storage all act as buffers. Point is that's not as simple as it seems.

I'm so happy that I drive a Tesla. I haven't been in a gas station in years. Switch to EVs guys!

bawolff 28 minutes ago | parent

If anyone knew for sure they would make a killing at the stock market.

However we dont know what the future holds. All sorts of factors affect what is going to happen. Will china continue to import less? Will the houthis be able to stop Saudi exports long term or is it just a short term issue? Will USA be able to guard ships passing through the strait? Will Iran face some sort of internal collapse? Will USA pack up and go home? Will other countries be drawn into this war?

Nobody can tell you what is really "going on" because nobody knows what the future holds and uncertainty is high.

unethical_ban 7 minutes ago | parent

If I knew what I was doing (or asked a clever AI for help and trusted it) I would bet long on a transition off oil. Most countries other than the US are posturing for it, my retirement is in 30-40 years if I stay empoloyed, and I think even America will pick up solar in the long run.

I don't know a ton about business. But what I realize is companies should not be tied to their methods of their business. An oil company should be an energy company. A car company should be a transit company.

Tied to the discussion about DHH and Rails this week: I can kind of respect DHH saying implicitly "The days of Rails are waning due to LLMs". He's not attached to a framework, he's attached to an idea of people building apps easily.

consensus1 28 minutes ago | parent

The headline is hiding the fact that this was a fairly modest 400K bbl draw for the week.

hedora 14 minutes ago | parent

The reserve is effectively empty at 250M-300M barrels, and currently sits at 284M. The rapid deceleration to 400K could mean that there’s no quick way to keep withdrawing the remaining reserves.

thelastgallon 26 minutes ago | parent

Global oil prices haven't skyrocketed so far thanks to China inverting the OPEC strategy of keeping prices up by destroying supply.

China stopped/reduced buying, used their large reserves, EVs and now accelerating EV trucks. And also coal to liquids.

Eventually, China may have to start buying and thats when the fun begins.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/business/energy-environme...

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Chinas-Renewable-Boom-Masks...

China is now the world’s great oil power. Forget OPEC. The Chinese Communist Party calls the shots. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238158

seizethecheese 7 minutes ago | parent

I was following until “China is now the world’s great oil power.” China imports a massive amount of oil and it’s at an all time high.

tmellon2 26 minutes ago | parent

We can simply get rid of most oil - Just ONE square mile of batteries and a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar can power the entire USA 24/7.

It is because of world wide adoption of EVs that the fossil fuel demand has reduced and stabilized gas prices in the US.

See : https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo...

yanhangyhy 23 minutes ago | parent

how about the oil from Venezuela?

mrdependable 18 minutes ago | parent

Will take years to make productive if anyone is even willing to invest in it.

thelastgallon 18 minutes ago | parent

It will need 10s - 100s of billions of investment. By the time they start producing, demand would have been permanently destroyed, thanks to China supplying the world with EVs and solar panels. With sufficient demand destruction, oil should be priced like salt, a simple commodity that nobody ever cares about the price.

Oil companies are not super keen on investing and increasing supply, it will destroy profits.

Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6963043-turning-oil-i...