FREEPORT, TEXAS: In an aerial view, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage facility at the Bryan Mound site is seen on October 19, 2022 in Freeport, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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Claims have been circulating on social media that the United States has only about two weeks of oil left. The calculation appears to compare the 286.6 million barrels currently held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with roughly 20.7 million barrels per day of U.S. petroleum demand, producing a figure of about 14 days. But that does not describe how the U.S. petroleum system works, and even the units are mismatched. The SPR holds crude oil, while the 20.7-million-barrel figure represents total petroleum products supplied, a broad proxy for consumption that includes gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products.
The latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report shows why the claim is misleading. The United States is producing about 13.9 million barrels per day of crude oil, commercial crude inventories stand at roughly 424.5 million barrels, and refineries are processing about 17.5 million barrels per day. Large volumes of crude also continue to move into and out of the country every day. The SPR is an emergency layer of supply behind that continuously operating system, not a tank America is living from until it runs dry.
What The SPR Is For
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo exposed the economic damage that can result from a major oil-supply interruption. Congress authorized the reserve in 1975, and the crude is stored in underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast near major refineries, pipelines, and ports. The Department of Energy describes the SPR as a tool for reducing the impact of severe petroleum supply disruptions, and its current design capacity is 714 million barrels. At 286.6 million barrels as of August 28, the reserve is at its lowest level since November 1982.
I think of the SPR as an insurance policy. Reducing an insurance policy may have no immediate consequence, but it leaves fewer options when the next emergency arrives. A smaller SPR does not mean the country is about to run out of oil, but it means the government has less stored crude available to cushion another disruption. The reserve held 638 million barrels at the end of 2020, so drawdowns in recent years have significantly reduced that emergency cushion.
Biden’s 2022 Drawdown
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent crude prices sharply higher, with Brent and West Texas Intermediate both moving above $100 per barrel. President Joe Biden subsequently announced a 180-million-barrel SPR release at roughly one million barrels per day for six months. The release was a factor in the later decline in oil prices.
The Energy Information Administration noted that U.S. and international strategic releases increased global crude supply as prices declined during the second half of 2022, while a Treasury Department analysis estimated that the coordinated releases lowered gasoline prices by roughly 17 to 42 cents per gallon relative to what they otherwise might have been. The Biden administration later began rebuilding the reserve, bringing it back to about 413 million barrels by the end of 2025.
Trump Is Using The SPR Again
The next major test arrived this year after the war with Iran severely disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. In March, the 32 members of the International Energy Agency agreed to make 400 million barrels of emergency stocks available, the largest coordinated release in the organization’s history, with the United States committing 172 million barrels from the SPR.
EIA data show that the reserve fell from 413.3 million barrels on April 3 to 286.6 million barrels by August 28, a decline of nearly 127 million barrels in less than five months. Unlike the 2022 program, which was primarily a sale, the current U.S. program is structured as an exchange: companies receive SPR crude now and must return similar-quality crude later, along with additional barrels as a premium. That arrangement can eventually rebuild the reserve, but barrels promised for later cannot respond to another emergency today.
Weekly U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR
Energy Information Administration
What The Weekly Data Show
The latest petroleum balance sheet gives a useful picture of what the SPR release is doing in the current market. Over the most recent four weeks, commercial U.S. crude inventories increased at an average rate of about 624,000 barrels per day, while SPR inventories declined at about 650,000 barrels per day. Those movements almost offset one another, leaving total crude inventories, including the SPR, little changed over the period. That does not mean every barrel leaving the SPR went directly into commercial storage, because production, refinery runs, imports and exports are all changing at the same time, but it shows how significantly the emergency release is cushioning the overall balance.
The scale is meaningful without suggesting that the country is surviving on the reserve. A release rate of roughly 650,000 barrels per day is less than 4% of current refinery crude inputs. Meanwhile, the United States is producing nearly 14 million barrels per day and importing roughly 6.7 million barrels per day of crude, while also exporting several million barrels per day. Those large, continuous flows are why overseas disruptions still affect U.S. prices and why several hundred thousand additional barrels per day from the SPR can impact prices at the margin.
What Happens When The Draws Stop?
The current release is finite, so eventually those extra barrels will disappear from the market. The balance will then have to adjust through some combination of higher domestic production, more imports, fewer exports, commercial inventory draws, lower refinery runs or weaker demand, with price helping balance those adjustments. Markets are forward-looking, so traders will not wait until the final SPR barrel is delivered before accounting for the end of the program.
The exchange structure also means that some oil must later move in the opposite direction, from commercial hands back into government storage. If global supplies are comfortable by then, that may be easy to absorb, but if the market remains tight, the refill itself could add pressure at the margin.
The More Useful Question
The claim that America has only 14 days of oil left confuses an emergency reserve with the country’s entire petroleum supply. The SPR was created to add supply during exactly the kind of geopolitical disruptions seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now around the Strait of Hormuz, and both administrations have used it for that purpose.
Using the reserve can soften a near-term supply shock, while temporarily reducing the country’s emergency cushion. At 286.6 million barrels, that cushion is now much smaller than it was before the two major drawdowns in recent years. A better measure of U.S. energy security is how much emergency capacity remains, how quickly it can reach the market, and when the borrowed barrels begin returning, rather than a viral calculation suggesting the country is about to run out of oil.
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