The drop in Jan 2017 was due to Hurricane Harvey which disrupted foreign crude deliveries. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/31/us-taps-strategic-oil-reserves

The drop in Jan 2017 was due to Hurricane Harvey which disrupted foreign crude deliveries. https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/31/us-taps-strategic-oil-reserves/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/31/us-taps-strategic-oil... You are right that it wasn't 77M barrels in 2020 - my bad. I didn't realise that Democrats had blocked funding for that proposed initiative of SPR increase. The Trump administration worked around this by reducing this to ~30 million barrels and awarding storage contracts. This appears to match your figures. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-25/trump-s-thwarted-oil-buy-would-ve-given-biden-6-billion-bonanza https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-25/trump-s-t... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/funding-to-refill-oil-reserve-cut-from-stimulus-but-could-return https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/funding-t...