U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1982
oilprice.com
oilprice.com
https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...
Highcharts.charts.forEach(chart => { if (chart) chart.yAxis.forEach(axis => axis.update({ min: 0 })); });At first I thought that’s why the graph zeros where it does, but it’s Y axis starts at 200M.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/less-300-million-barr...
People jump over the details in normal times, but then times get abnormal and impossible things start to happen.
Now scale that to millions of barrels of oil every day.
2. Harvest.
In fact, a common further down in this thread says that's exactly how they harvest all of the oil: they pressurize it with (salt)water.
What was the SPR being used for a few years ago?
Edit: Whoever downvoted, would you be willing to explain why?
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.
It's mind boggling how stupid it all is.
I am not sure its stupid. My conspiracy theory is that Trump works/connected to US oil industry, who took control over Venezuela's oil and now printing record profits since all competition (Hormuz states, Russia) is suffering from infra damage.
Also still plausible that Trump is managing to line his own pockets with the profits of that Venezuelan heavy crude being sent to Qatar.
I think you just need to look at the administration's rhetoric since the war started to see they were surprised by this outcome.
they can keep prices using reserves until midterm, and Trump likely doesn't care what will happen after that
> they were surprised by this outcome.
they were surprised initially, but this is many months long story already, they had a chance to reassess situation and there is totally a chance that oil industry petitioned to not deescalate.
I don't think deescalation is on the table, regardless of big oil. The one supposed deal that Iran was on board with made Trump look like a loser and he will put boots on the ground before he allows that. After midterms, of course.
I don't think he cares, he will just declare victory as always.
E.g. he seems to be in absolute shambles over his approval rating while simultaneously claiming that the "real" polls make him look great.
As far as Venezuela is concerned, my understanding is that China is not thrilled with this deal and we've yet to see if it will actually happen. With Trump's record of actually delivering the goods, the odds are it will not.
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.
So, if passenger demand halved overnight, prices for long-haul transport would implode. Even with the straits closed, tanks in the supply line would start to hit capacity, and spot prices could even go negative again.
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.
That said, Putin's gonna do what Putin's gonna do and it likely wasn't the Crimean invasion that prompted it. It was the promise of waltzing in and just taking it without resistance.
On top of that, 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, which means that all of the foreign policy people had been brushing up on their histories of World War I and the causes of said war, which is of course the ur-example of "random event escalates to every great power at war with each other." I definitely felt like a lone voice pointing out that I was getting more World War II vibes, with Putin acting like Hitler: "I just want a little bit of X, it's the last thing I'll ask for, I promise!"
Also, probably more important than the US reaction here is the German reaction, and Germany was in full Russian appeasement mode really right up until Russian tanks were literally rolling across the border in 2022.
People who make a big point about "Crimea is Ukraine!" are either ignorant or ideological, objectively it's at best debatable.
(And really, there should be no slavs there at all and it should be given back to the Tatars, if anyone really wants to get into the morals...)
But if Ukraine became prosperous and democratic it would make Putin look bad. Think West Germany against East Germany.
My point is the 1991 borders are somewhat arbitrary: they were originally internal administrative divisions inside a larger centralised state.
They don't necessarily represent a natural long term international border, and attaching huge moral significance to the specific strokes of a Soviet bureaucrat's pen is strange
"I need to attack Ukraine because you're trying to get it into NATO, at which point attacking it is impossible/much harder." ~Putin, probably
NATO can be criticized for a lot, Afghanistan for example, but despite hearing the argument that Russia attacking Ukraine is NATOs fault, it's never been coherent.
It's not just that Putin knew it'd be harder to attack NATO, but it was a clear signal of non-neutrality where they were previously neutral. Even if Germany would've repeatedly blocked their entry to NATO, both countries were aligning with it.
It's all circular reasoning trying to claim otherwise. "Neutrality" would be letting Ukraine fend for it self while Russia aggressively attacks their elections and implants stooges, which I frankly find absurd. Do I believe the US does something similar less crudely? Yes. Do I believe the EU or any other NATO member does? Hardly.
Under that doctrine, if you are a European country bordering Russia, your duty is to help defending Russia. You can choose whether you do that as an ally or a puppet, but you are not allowed to make any other choices.
That's not reasonable fear, given what Europe became after WW2, but it's what Russian leaders expect. Especially those of Putin's generation, who spent their early lives preparing for a possible NATO invasion that could start WW3.
As you say, I don't buy it as a reasonable fear, but I can at least buy it as a rationalization.
Finland and the USSR had a defensive treaty that, among other things, obligated Finland to fight against NATO if it tried to use Finnish territory or airspace to attack the USSR. There was also a Soviet military base near Helsinki that was supposed to be there until 1994. But after Khrushchev rose to power, the Soviets decided to return it for a number of reasons.
After the USSR fell, Finland deliberately stayed out of NATO in order to maintain a good relationship with Russia. Because the popular support for NATO membership was very low, Russia apparently believed Finnish intentions. Even in late 2021, only ~25% of Finns supported joining NATO. (Six months later, that number was ~75%.)
The question isn't why the US wants something, or why Russia wants something, it's why Ukraine wanted/wants to join NATO/EU. If you believe that's purely from US/west pressure, then agree to disagree I guess, but I'm trying to be persuaded it's not because of constant Russian aggression going back decades.
Yes Ukraine had their own agency, but the two empires' diplomacy matters more, which is unfortunately just how the world works. Plenty of countries would want to join NATO if assured protection, but they didn't, and that's why there isn't now a proxy war everywhere Russia (or China) has influence. The empires figured out where to draw the line in a way that angers neither side too much.
Not sure why exactly Georgia left CSTO and started aligning with NATO in 1999. Seems they realized CSTO was a joke because it wasn't actually protecting their territory from separatist movements. Led to Russia invading Georgia while NATO gave up on it. Similar thing happened in Armenia more recently, where we've yet to see how it plays out; seems like Russia is too busy with Ukraine right now.
If you want to claim the Biden administration rested on its laurels in 2022, you were either not paying attention or are not participating in good faith.
it wasn't simply supply chain shocks, it was supply chain shocks in a time of rampant inflation caused by the endless stimulus checks and programs after Covid.
Supply chain shocks cause "legitimate" price increases, it's not "too many dollars chasing too few goods", rather the value of each dollar simply doesn't stretch as far any more, and while trying to hold the line on prices is a fool's errand, trying to make that case to the public in a time of rampant inflation is not going to succeed either
It's just incredibly dumb to start a war that will tank global petroleum supply chains before stocking back up.
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.
" President Barack Obama used his State of the Union speech to underscore the role of natural gas in transitioning to a lower-carbon nation, the White House indicated tonight.
According to a White House briefing document issued in conjunction with the speech, Obama’s agenda for natural gas includes a call for Congress to work with the administration to create new “Sustainable Shale Gas Growth Zones” to help “regions come together to make sure shale gas is developed in a safe, responsible way that helps build diverse and resilient regional economies that can withstand boom-and-bust cycles and can be leaders in building and deploying clean energy technologies.”
"
https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2014/01/obama-to...
Although remarkably there's been a lot of commie talk about nationalising the energy sector and not from the usual suspects...
Let's also not pretend that the current Republican administration's insane military campaign to disrupt oil supply and markets, isn't helpful to, I don't know, say, Kremlin's oil and gas export revenues, and say, how higher global benchmark crude helps to, say, finance a domestic war economy while buffering against sanctions. Just a tiny thought to consider when holding a preference for Republican oil strategy.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-environm...
The US also exports its own crude for blending with other crude at foreign refineries. A refinery may not be able to process some types of crude but can process that crude if blended with a different type of crude to change its average properties. The limit to this for refineries is the cost of buying and shipping enough suitable blending crude to the refinery.
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.
We're already a net exporter of oil; if we pushed a bigger fraction of cars and other transport uses to electrification we'd be a massive net exporter.
That wouldn't completely insulate us from global energy markets but it'd do a lot.
From my understanding they are running refineries at max utilization and not able to do required maintenance due to this crisis. This is what worries me about the October surprise. A couple of well timed "screw ups" caused by lack of maintenance when the whole system is already at its breaking point can spell trouble.
Your link doesn't back up your claim that it's more efficient. And believing that fracking is "more efficient" than simply drilling into a pressurized gusher pocket is a boggling conclusion.
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...
But first we’d need to develop four dimensional solar panels
Or nearly all of Maryland?
More directly, the US uses over 30 million acres to grow corn for biofuels. That's over 40,000 square miles, if I did my math right.
As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol points out, "Growing corn to fuel internal combustion vehicles is a highly inefficient use of land. A solar farm generating electricity to power an electric vehicle would power around 85 times as much distance as corn ethanol grown on the same area."
The ethanol market isn't just about fuel, it acts as an economic buffer that keeps millions of acres of land fertile, farmed, and operational. If a global supply chain collapse hits, we can immediately redirect that acreage to feed livestock and people. If you cover that prime topsoil with solar panels, that agricultural capacity is gone. A nation that can feed itself has national security sacrificing our emergency food reserve for electricity is not a good idea.
If there is a global supply chain collapse, then the price of fossil fuels will likely go through the roof, placing a greater demand for substitutes like ethanol, which will raise the price of food and feed crops as farmers switch to produce the more profitable fuel crops. Or if the government orders the farmers to only produce corn for livestock and people, then there's no effective fuel substitute.
What keeps the land fertile is not the corn monoculture of places like Iowa, but rather a massive amount of fertilizer. As we know from the US war with Iran, fertilizer availability is subject to a global supply chain collapse because the current production methods require a lot of fossil fuel for power.
If you want to reduce your dependency on the global fertilizer supply chain, you'll need a lot of cheap local power to make things like anhydrous ammonia locally.
The experience with agrivoltaics shows that solar power and agriculture can coexist profitably on the same land. At the very least it's not simply a one-or-the-other option, or as you characterized it, "is gone".
If you really want to keeps millions of acres land fertile to handle a possible future economic crisis, you should want severe limits on building new urban and low-density residential development on farmland. If you turn farmland into a suburb, that farmland is far more "gone", for agricultural purposes, than setting up solar panels.
The paper at https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/... estimates well over 10 million acres of agricultural land lost that way by 2040, which at 15,000+ square miles is far more than the quoted 10,000 square miles needed to get rid of most oil use.
So it seems to me that for your goal of making the US less affected by a global supply chain collapse, you should want to have a lot more PV farms.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-strategic-pet...
The cost of putting unsophisticated grifters in the ultimate position of power.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Green New Deal via incompetence)
https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608
> If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it. —- Lindsey Graham, May 3, 2016
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
I am afraid we can't really be sure about this.
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.
The majority of the Republican electorate demands an authoritarian leader unconstrained by the rule of law. Trump won't be the last.
> An elected officeholder or group continuing in office during the period between failure to win an election and the inauguration of a successor.
Many senators aren't going to be up for election until 2030. Their allegiance to Trump due to his influence only lasts as long as he can threaten their re-election 2 years after he's an ex-president (and let's face it, he's quite old...). As I've said, we've already seen his influence fade. Just a bit, but this kind of thing goes fast once it does.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Iranian expats I talk to (who are all very very opposed to the Iranian regime) are depressed because their read is that the regime has increased support within Iran because of their success standing up to the US.
The sanctions have made Iran much closer to Russia and China though.
> 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.
I agree with this analysis. If the US could walk away with JCPOA back they'd love it (of course they couldn't call it the "Obama Iran deal" anymore, but putting that aside).
Iran seems to think they can get a more favorable deal because the US has no appetite to make this a long war. I think there is evidence to support that position.
South Africa comes to mind.
More generally though, economic sanctions usually don't create regime change, they convince regimes to quietly change policies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. However even if it doesn't work, it can weaken the regime to the point of irrelevance. Sanctions did not cause regime change in north korea, but it made them so poor that they weren't really a threat.
And really this isn't sanctions, this is a blockade which is sanctions on steriods.
> Iran seems to think they can get a more favorable deal because the US has no appetite to make this a long war. I think there is evidence to support that position.
Who can hold out longer is the million dollar question. US clearly has no appetite for war, especially this one. Iran clearly is economically struggling (If it gets to the point where they can't pay the police or the populace cant afford food, things can get very bad very quickly). Long term the leverage on the strait will disappear as the market finds alternative.
So who is more on the clock? I guess time will tell.
> So who is more on the clock? I guess time will tell.
Well we know the US's deadlines. The midterms are one, and in 2 years time US policy will change (although unclear how exactly).
“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)
The US is winning on so many fronts these days, it’s getting hard to track. /s
Could you quote the exact text you're interpreting here?
(Not the whole Project 2025 text; the specific sentence(s) that imply that.)
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.
Why???
Pretty much everything you've said is true, but it happened in 2022. Biden wasn't even POTUS in 2020.
So Jan 2021-Feb 2022 Biden didn't top up the SPR, something that definitely makes sense given the fiscal situation.
From Feb 2022 onwards, oil prices spiked because Russia invaded Ukraine. People started putting stupid "I did this" stickers on gas pumps and Biden drew from the SPR when it was nowhere near empty.
Trump doesn't refill it, with both houses of Congress, then starts a war with a nation who every military analyst knows could close a huge oil passageway.
Strategic petroleum reserves work best when there's strategy behind that which depletes them. It's difficult to see the US's strategy behind exposing itself in this way.
Oil barrens will now yield even more political leverage not just over trump but also his successors
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
For now, that is China due to both high consumption and huge facilities for oil storage. They maintained a relatively low oil price until now, but they could rise the price of oil at any time.
All reports about the initiation of the war was that Bibi wanted it and manipulated Trump to join in (against the advice of all of those around him warning that the very problem we have now would in fact occur).
its not entirely manufactured. The IAEA report was pretty clear they were violating the rules. It was almost certainly the most damning report the IAEA has ever made in their entire history.
But yes, the real reason for the war, is that the protests made Iran look weak, so they thought they had a limited-time opportunity to deal with a long term adversary. Iran's proxy strategy threatening US interests in the regions almost certainly had just as much to do with it as the nuclear issue.
Ignoring the reality that he let himself be talked into the Iran war by Israel, over strong US military objections. And suggesting instead he's secretly starting a war with China by cutting off oil to the entire far east.
A move which has only strengthened Chinas power in the region.
It's recursively stupid all the way down.
The previous head of the reserves said we "couldn't realistically go below 300m". The Dept. of Energy requires at least 250m in the reserves for emergencies. Some other have estimated we could go as low as 70m.
It's entirely possible that we've already just about reached the minimum.
The very lowest layer of oil also has more sediment mixing issues and requires more processing to be useful.
Its possible Oil price might go higher. Oil Prices Ignore the Warning Signs in Physical Markets: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Prices-Ignore...
The Strait was moving 20M bpd. Say with some over production and clever rerouting, the world was only at a 10M bpd deficit. This has been happening for six months now or 180x10M bpd = 1800M barrels that were never taken out of the ground.
Which is to say, you would need the world production to over produce by 10M bpd from previous levels for six months just to break even. That is not feasible. After this crisis, I suspect many governments will wish their SPRs were larger.
It's pretty difficult to figure out what the reality is besides "not good".
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.
If you liked Y2K, you're gonna love 2.2f!
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!
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.
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.
Solar solar solar! The US is perfect for solar. Do more solar. And drive EVs.
The nation where people drive these ridiculously huge trucks that guzzle gas like no tomorrow is complaining about gas prices. In Europe gas costs twice as much!
Just as a note, sadly the canadian consumer carbon tax was killed (the industrial carbon tax remains).
Everything is hyperbolized, but everything is also true. The Iran war is going horrifically and will likely destabilize oil prices for the foreseeable future. If nothing changes, it'd be catastrophic, but it will change. If necessary OPEC or Russia can be offered sweet deals to stabilize availability, the US could simply sign a favorable (for Iran) deal while waving a white flag emblazoned with "Mission Successful - Nukes Destroyed!" And so on.
So gas prices will not skyrocket, but they will also not stabilize. The current US administration will likely do poorly in the midterms, but that will probably change much less than might be expected. The political establishment loves war, and a war that's going badly puts them in a favorable position for a follow-up victory in 2028, which will otherwise be much closer to a typical coinflip. Though even with the Iran War still ongoing, it'd probably be a coinflip. Yay for polarization.
Anyhow, yeah. The world doesn't end with a bang, but a whimper.
Trump is constitutionally[1] unable to do that. He cant compromise or look weak, or it'll conjure the ghost of Fred Trump calling him a loser one more time. Ironically, this fear of losing is how becomes a loser: first against(!) Covid-19, when he thought wearing a mask made him look weak, and now against Iran.
1. His make up, not the document
https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts
It was higher in price at the peak of the Russia-Ukraine disruptions but that's because it was already coming off Covid-related supply chain disruptions. It rose more from Iran war than it did from the Russia war.
This, naturally, resulted in higher oil prices, which the Republican party blamed Biden for.
They truly have no shame.
In 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.
It is absolutely true.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/trump-saudi-arabia-russi...
> President Trump played a key role in the historic agreement between the world’s largest oil producers that trims global production by nearly 10 percent, according to Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Russia%E2%80%93Saudi_Arab...
(If you think Fox is biased against him, I'd be happy to link a leftie source.)
> On 2 April, U.S. President Donald Trump, after significant internal pressure, called Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, threatening to withdraw U.S. military support if OPEC and its allies did not cut oil production.[32] The following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered energy minister Alexander Novak to prepare an extraordinary OPEC meeting and stated that global production could be cut by 10 million barrels. In response to Putin's statement, oil prices jumped.[33] Even with a 10 million bpd cut, the International Energy Agency estimated that global oil stockpiles would still increase by 15 million bpd. IEA's director, Fatih Birol, stated that 50 million jobs related to oil refining and retail was at risk globally.[34] US oil prices increased by 25% on 2 April, the biggest one-day increase in history. Brent oil increased to $32 on 3 April.[35]
> On 9 April, Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to oil production cuts. Reuters reported that "If Saudi Arabia failed to rein in output, US senators called on the White House to impose sanctions on Riyadh, pull out US troops from the kingdom and impose import tariffs on Saudi oil."[37]
It's his usual playbook. Cause a problem, blame someone else for it. The deal was for two years, and the relevant OPEC members adhered to it, and the price of oil skyrocketed.
> 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)
Remember that?
Also, the bottom of the reserve is mostly sludge.
(a) as the levels drop below 300M barrels, pumping out of the reserve is much less efficient, so we can’t necessarily draw it down as quickly as when it’s full. So the lower it gets, the less useful it is
And (b) there are a lot of varying estimates for the real effective floor, anywhere from the 180ish to 300M barrels is within the range of a safe minimum level.
The problem is that as you pump oil and water in and out of it, in the intervening layer between the salt water and oil there forms a water/oil/impurities sludge which is useless (it ruins the pumping equipment). The thing is, they have no way of measuring it, nobody knows how much good oil is left and how much is sludge (or if they do, none of that information is public). And the closer you get to the sludge, the harder the good oil is to extract, slowing down the extraction pace.
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...
Trump has basically enacted their revenge for that.
US refinery capacity is much larger than its world-leading oil production. Oil refining is a major export business for the US.
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...
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...
Civilian market autos are a miniscule drop in the bucket compared to heavy industry, tankers, aircraft and rail RE; consumption and demand draw.
Your posit of the mile battery bank and solar farm is certainly not "incorrect", but the tragedy of the commons and resource distrobution is a classical problem that would inevitabally lead to exactly the same situation.