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

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

About 40-45% of US petroleum use is burning it in passenger cars.

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.

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

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 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.

In relation to your first paragraph, do you think that in the world as a whole moving forward into the future there will be more economic growth in oil or in energy sectors involving solar, wind, batteries, and nuclear? How do you reconcile the economic potential of oil against the market data involving renewables? I.e., the reality of the data is showing that solar plus grid scale batteries are quickly on track to become cheaper than oil could ever promise to be, and that electric vehicles are clearly on track to beat gasoline in total cost of ownership.

Can we look at what China is doing and say that oil production is the growing future rather than a slowly declining industry with superior emerging alternatives?

Moving on to your second paragraph, isn’t oil dependence a big part of the cause with importing oil from problematic regimes? In other words, you can achieve energy independence by producing more energy, or using less energy. Energy in, energy out.

In that sense, don’t you think the Republican strategy leaves a lot to be desired? E.g., they just this week axed vehicle fuel efficiency standards, they aren’t encouraging domestic battery/EV manufacturing, they are against public transit projects, they are pro-suburb, pro-automobile, anti-urbanism, etc. I remember when John Kasich blocked high speed rail in Ohio, and the federal government was going to give them the funding! You drive between Cleveland and Columbus on I-71 and you’ll notice that it’s a 3-lane road for the entire 2-hour stretch and the traffic congestion never lets up unless it’s the middle of the night.

Domestic oil production is theoretically a solution but the global market isn’t really isolated like that. Even if America decides to be self-sufficient that doesn’t mean that prices will be low. Prices are low for goods when there is a widespread surplus of supplies. If the Iran war can spike gasoline prices almost double as they have in the past year or so, how will domestic production ever make up for that?

Finally, regarding your stance on slave labor. Perhaps we can make a positive argument to say that tariffs may in theory encourage more domestic production, bringing more goods production to a country with stronger labor laws. But now we are facing the cruel irony of US states moving the opposite direction on workers rights, doing things like toying with the idea of relaxing child labor laws. [1]

How good are US labor standards, really? This is a country with zero guaranteed paid parental leave, zero guaranteed paid time off (except in a small amount of states that have a minimum standard exceeding the federal standard — blue states like Illinois), and over 20 million residents with no health insurance coverage as well as the highest medical bankruptcy rate in the world.

When we talk about slave labor, are we talking about basic necessary medical care being conditional on continued employment? Are we talking about mothers going back to work 3 months after giving birth or sooner? Because that is America.

Fun fact: China has more mandatory paid holidays and leave days than the US.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/some-lawmakers-propose...

So the Green New Deal was about enabling foreign oil producers?

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.

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

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.

Thats the Economist's title on the article.

The Iran War was predicated on a manufactured threat of them getting nuclear weapons. That's been the line for some 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).

Indeed. The global production was closely aligned with consumption. Even if everything became normal tomorrow, there just isn’t enough slack capacity to make up for the loss over anything but years.

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.

So how exactly are they supposed to swoop in? With what?

I dunno, this seems like confirmation bias.

Project 2025 can be anything you want it to be.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Why???

They'll push that date to November 4 any way they can.

I do not buy that the SPR is effectively empty at 35-42% of capacity

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.

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!

The Simpson's had a nice take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dxVwA7bU2E

> . 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!

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

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.

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

But why?