4 ms·

US oil reserves are so low, the caverns holding them could be damaged

Waterluvian 1mo ago
> The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years. It was not designed for American politics. This feels like a failure of applying realistic, knowable expectations.
- derwiki 1mo ago
  Knowable but not admittable, maybe
- tonyhart7 1mo ago
  for some reason, US government really love to pounce on middle east
- jubilanti 1mo ago
  These sentences are deceptive and journalistic malpractice. The "instead" implies there have been dozens of *full* drawdowns. Check the data: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp/1280px-US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...
  - AshamedBadger56 1mo ago
    I wouldn't be so quick to jump to deceptive and journalistic malpractice. The way I read it was not that they were inflating the number of drawdowns, but rather pointing out that it was designed for full drawdowns, not rapid and repeated cycles of addition/extraction. The problem seems to be the rate of extraction and replacement, not the total volume ever extracted. I could be reading it wrong, but that was the impression I got. "The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years. Misra told CNBC that “because the system was not designed for this many cycles, the repeated injection of water and extraction of oil have caused severe cavern deformation, accelerated the rate of massive salt falls from the ceilings, and significantly weakened the overall structural integrity of the aging reserve.”
  - spiderfarmer 1mo ago
    That data says nothing about individual locations.
- ben_w 1mo ago
  What would the US government have realistically been able to know or expect in 1974 with only one major oil shock big enough to warrant the creation of the system?
  - lokar 1mo ago
    I think one could have anticipated the temptation to use it to smooth prices in election years.
    - spiderfarmer 1mo ago
      The biggest drawdowns happened under a president that prides himself on being a rule breaker. So what rules would have prevented this stupidity.
      - lokar 1mo ago
        The president, and his supporters in Congress. He could not be doing what he has been doing without them. They share responsibility.
        spiderfarmer 1mo ago
        He started a war without them.
        ben_w 1mo ago
        Indeed, though as they had the power to stop him, I believe that still counts for > He could not be doing what he has been doing without them. They share responsibility
- fn-mote 1mo ago
  “Dozens of cycles” is totally misleading. They do not mean FULL cycles. The only truthful reading of this claim is that there have been dozens of years that some oil has been released. The only major drawdowns occur 2020-present.
  - lokar 1mo ago
    And it was not expected to be used that way. It was expected to be used a few times, mostly all of it, for big emergencies. Not to smooth prices in an election year.
  - magicalhippo 1mo ago
    > The only truthful reading of this claim is that there have been dozens of years that some oil has been released. And that's a problem if the system hasn't been designed for such an operating regime, which the article indicates is the case. Think of the memory effect[1] in NiCd batteries, except the failure mode is more permanent than just a temporary loss of usable capacity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect
- hnbad 1mo ago
  The US has local oil extraction so in theory its oil supply should be easily self-sustaining. Of course oil doesn't work like that (the local refinement industry is not built for the domestic oil) but this failure is ultimately a consequence of economic policy - not that the US is unique in this. As I understand it, the oil reserves simply weren't built for frequent use. They were built as a backup plan for a global supply chain collapse. Arguably that happened twice in recent history - first with COVID, then with the US deciding to do it itself by getting into a war with the one state where its experts had predicted a war would cause this to happen and that could not readily be defeated because it's literally carved into a vast mountain range and had decades to come up with a plan for defending itself. Honestly, the war on Iran isn't even in the range of ordinary American politics - even if you come from the most pessimistic "CIA regime change world tour" angle. There's no coherent reason for it to have been executed the way it was that doesn't require assumptions that most people justifiably would dismiss as conspiracy theories (e.g. intentional destroying the global economy for short-term profit through betting & investments). It's noteworthy that the caverns holding the reserves are on the verge of collapsing. But it's kind of a moot point because there's no way to restore global supply lines in time to refill them when fully drained this time. Tankers are the only viable way to transport large amounts of oil over long distances and it would take months for any shipments out of the region to arrive and there have been practically no shipments for months already. Unless the US is going to enact rationing, reserves will be gone soon and so will be local supply. Plus if there's any place willing and able to buy oil at a ridiculous markup, that's where the market (and the remaining supply) will go unless the US wants to pivot into outright piracy.
mindslight 1mo ago
> Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich told CNBC in a statement that assertions regarding cavern collapse were false. “The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Dietderich said, asserting that the Trump administration was “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be.” This statement makes me feel worse, not better. Translating from doublespeak: they are acknowledging the caverns are collapsing, and are running it into the ground like every other "critical national security asset".
ck2 1mo ago
yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444 not just damaged, damaged permanently, like everything else this administration is burning to the ground in our country and just making it someone else's problem to rebuild over the next CENTURY
- mnky9800n 1mo ago
  Boomer politics has always been about me and not thee.
  - WarmWash 1mo ago
    You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who votes against their interests.
    - BLKNSLVR 1mo ago
      Ironically, it's usually the opposite, but they've been tricked into thinking it's in their interests. Copying what someone else said here once... gestures vaguely to everything
      - WarmWash 1mo ago
        I generally find that that idea comes from ignorance of "the other side" rather than the reality of the situation. People on the left and right are incredibly ignorant of what the other side actually wants and is doing. Half the media would go bankrupt if that changed.
    - roumenguha 1mo ago
      People have both personal and social interests; the latter can overcome the former in a system that people can trust. (Not saying that we have that right now, or ever have)
    - bequanna 1mo ago
      Generations before Boomers crafted policy that considered the future beyond them (children and grandchildren). Boomers do not follow that tradition.
bob1029 1mo ago
[dead]
jubilanti 1mo ago
Just going to leave this graph of reserves over time here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp/1280px-US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...
- flutas 1mo ago
  Never mind this > On March 19, 2020, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Energy to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to maximum capacity, when oil was priced at $24 per barrel. This directive was given to help support domestic oil producers given the impending economic collapse from COVID-19 and extreme drops in international oil markets. However, funding was blocked by Congress, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer stating that Democrats had blocked a "bailout for big oil". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U...
  - LightBug1 1mo ago
    I'm no fan of Mr Schumer. However, perhaps he was of the opinion that US-Israel wouldn't have been as stupid as they were to go war with Iran in the way that they did.
  - pingou 1mo ago
    Not sure why you’re being downvoted. It seems like it would have been a sensible time to buy back then with such a low price, although of course government spending was already very high due to COVID.
    - jubilanti 1mo ago
      > Not sure why you’re being downvoted The only consistent position on US politics that won't get you downvoted on HN is "both parties are dumb."
      - swed420 1mo ago
hnbad 1mo ago
Wasn't this known for a while? The problem is that simply agitating the liquid already causes immense wear because these are natural caves selected for their potential as long-term storage, not active sources. Not to mention that draining them reduces the quality of the remaining oil (much like how you never want to feed an engine from the bottom of a diesel tank). It's also my understanding that the problem is not just the reserves being drained, let alone drained so much, but also how rapidly they were drained because that again makes things worse.
tcfhgj 1mo ago
maybe a good time to say fare well to relying on fossil fuels for energy storage
raphinou 1mo ago
This is probably a naive question, but I'm wondering: isn't the usefulness of a reserve seriously diminished if using it prevents refilling it afterwards? What was the use case covered by this huge reserve if only a small part can be used before geopardising its future?
- jubilanti 1mo ago
  > What was the use case covered by this huge reserve if only a small part can be used before geopardising its future? Total global war (WWII style), total economic collapse (1929 style), and other kinds of not-even-once-in-a-generation multi-year catastrophes. Voters getting angry about the price of gas is not one of them.
LightBug1 1mo ago
Question: I don't know much about US oil, but hasn't Trump been bragging endlessly about being oil independent? If so, why is this a story?
- WarmWash 1mo ago
  The amount the US produces is a larger number than the amount that the US consumes. But what the US produces is not necessarily what the US consumes. Oil markets are global and there is tons of trading going on, so it's not really at all a "fully in house" operation.
  - lokar 1mo ago
    Even if US refineries used light crude, the producers sell to the highest bidder.
- hvb2 1mo ago
  Because what the US produces is just a kind of oil. Not all oil is the same, IIRC the US produces mostly light crude. Releasing barrels lowers the price but it's obviously only a temporary measure. I think it's a story as the cease fire with Iran is about to run out
- aw1621107 1mo ago
  Oil self-sufficiency isn't quite as simple as oil production > oil exports because not all crude is the same and refineries generally aren't completely crude-type-agnostic. IIRC US refineries prefer processing "heavy" (higher proportion of longer hydrocarbons) and "sour" (higher sulfur proportion) crude but most US production is "light" (higher proportion of shorter hydrocarbons) and "sweet" (lower sulfur proportion), so as a result the US still ends up importing/exporting a bunch of crude.
- adrian_b 1mo ago
  USA exports a lot of oil, but that cannot be used by the US oil refineries, which need to import oil, or take it from reserves. Therefore USA is not oil independent, despite being a net exporter.
naveen99 1mo ago
They should just securitize middle Easter oil and let us government buy some of it. I guess Saudi aramco was a step in that direction.
OutOfHere 1mo ago
US Crude Oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Stocks (I:USCOSPRE) 298.69M bbl for Wk of Aug 07 2026 https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil_in_the_strategic_petroleum_reserve https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil...
sebazzz 1mo ago
So natural caverns - empty spaces in the Earth - are used to store oil, but they shouldn’t be drained because it damages them permanently. Can anyone explain why it is useful as storage then? It is like a battery you arent allowed to discharge past 30%.
- bdcs 1mo ago
  Perhaps the more apt analogy is not a battery but a canister of petrol. Kidding aside, even one-time use energy storage can be useful during catastrophic events (war, etc)
- greycol 1mo ago
  Engineering considerations in favour of this setup: The cost of that 30% oil loss is less than engineering/site selection of a system that can be fully drained. The cost of a more robust system that isn't as damaged by use is higher over it's lifetime assuming the *Emergency* use case than just creating/prospecting replacement damageable reserves if necessary. If someone wanted a small reserve for 'market stabilizing' short term and repetitive small fill/drains they could build it for a lower cost than making the emergency reserve resilient enough to serve this purpose. Can't claim these are true in this case but also remember that norms were much more enforced at this time and voter could be expected to punish bad politicians (This was a couple of years after watergate) so expecting political parties to hold short sited/corrupt politicians to account when they were doing something visible may have influenced what they expected to happen to a "get me reelected on lower gas prices damn the consequences politician". So the main concern could easily be the stated 1 or 2 emergency drawdowns in the next century and we'll over engineer it so it can handle 5.
nojvek 1mo ago
Trump may be the catalyst to renewable energy acceleration. If gas is so obscenely expensive, then economics can play its natural course. US gas prices have been subsidized for so long. Now Trump’s war is getting gasonline to realistic prices.

> The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years. It was not designed for American politics. This feels like a failure of applying realistic, knowable expectations.

derwiki 1mo ago
Knowable but not admittable, maybe
tonyhart7 1mo ago
for some reason, US government really love to pounce on middle east
jubilanti 1mo ago
These sentences are deceptive and journalistic malpractice. The "instead" implies there have been dozens of *full* drawdowns. Check the data: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp/1280px-US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...
- AshamedBadger56 1mo ago
  I wouldn't be so quick to jump to deceptive and journalistic malpractice. The way I read it was not that they were inflating the number of drawdowns, but rather pointing out that it was designed for full drawdowns, not rapid and repeated cycles of addition/extraction. The problem seems to be the rate of extraction and replacement, not the total volume ever extracted. I could be reading it wrong, but that was the impression I got. "The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years. Misra told CNBC that “because the system was not designed for this many cycles, the repeated injection of water and extraction of oil have caused severe cavern deformation, accelerated the rate of massive salt falls from the ceilings, and significantly weakened the overall structural integrity of the aging reserve.”
- spiderfarmer 1mo ago
  That data says nothing about individual locations.
ben_w 1mo ago
What would the US government have realistically been able to know or expect in 1974 with only one major oil shock big enough to warrant the creation of the system?
- lokar 1mo ago
  I think one could have anticipated the temptation to use it to smooth prices in election years.
  - spiderfarmer 1mo ago
    The biggest drawdowns happened under a president that prides himself on being a rule breaker. So what rules would have prevented this stupidity.
    - lokar 1mo ago
      The president, and his supporters in Congress. He could not be doing what he has been doing without them. They share responsibility.
      - spiderfarmer 1mo ago
        He started a war without them.
        ben_w 1mo ago
        Indeed, though as they had the power to stop him, I believe that still counts for > He could not be doing what he has been doing without them. They share responsibility
fn-mote 1mo ago
“Dozens of cycles” is totally misleading. They do not mean FULL cycles. The only truthful reading of this claim is that there have been dozens of years that some oil has been released. The only major drawdowns occur 2020-present.
- lokar 1mo ago
  And it was not expected to be used that way. It was expected to be used a few times, mostly all of it, for big emergencies. Not to smooth prices in an election year.
- magicalhippo 1mo ago
  > The only truthful reading of this claim is that there have been dozens of years that some oil has been released. And that's a problem if the system hasn't been designed for such an operating regime, which the article indicates is the case. Think of the memory effect[1] in NiCd batteries, except the failure mode is more permanent than just a temporary loss of usable capacity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect
hnbad 1mo ago
The US has local oil extraction so in theory its oil supply should be easily self-sustaining. Of course oil doesn't work like that (the local refinement industry is not built for the domestic oil) but this failure is ultimately a consequence of economic policy - not that the US is unique in this. As I understand it, the oil reserves simply weren't built for frequent use. They were built as a backup plan for a global supply chain collapse. Arguably that happened twice in recent history - first with COVID, then with the US deciding to do it itself by getting into a war with the one state where its experts had predicted a war would cause this to happen and that could not readily be defeated because it's literally carved into a vast mountain range and had decades to come up with a plan for defending itself. Honestly, the war on Iran isn't even in the range of ordinary American politics - even if you come from the most pessimistic "CIA regime change world tour" angle. There's no coherent reason for it to have been executed the way it was that doesn't require assumptions that most people justifiably would dismiss as conspiracy theories (e.g. intentional destroying the global economy for short-term profit through betting & investments). It's noteworthy that the caverns holding the reserves are on the verge of collapsing. But it's kind of a moot point because there's no way to restore global supply lines in time to refill them when fully drained this time. Tankers are the only viable way to transport large amounts of oil over long distances and it would take months for any shipments out of the region to arrive and there have been practically no shipments for months already. Unless the US is going to enact rationing, reserves will be gone soon and so will be local supply. Plus if there's any place willing and able to buy oil at a ridiculous markup, that's where the market (and the remaining supply) will go unless the US wants to pivot into outright piracy.

mindslight 1mo ago

> Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich told CNBC in a statement that assertions regarding cavern collapse were false. “The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Dietderich said, asserting that the Trump administration was “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be.” This statement makes me feel worse, not better. Translating from doublespeak: they are acknowledging the caverns are collapsing, and are running it into the ground like every other "critical national security asset".

ck2 1mo ago

yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444 not just damaged, damaged permanently, like everything else this administration is burning to the ground in our country and just making it someone else's problem to rebuild over the next CENTURY

mnky9800n 1mo ago
Boomer politics has always been about me and not thee.
- WarmWash 1mo ago
  You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who votes against their interests.
  - BLKNSLVR 1mo ago
    Ironically, it's usually the opposite, but they've been tricked into thinking it's in their interests. Copying what someone else said here once... gestures vaguely to everything
    - WarmWash 1mo ago
      I generally find that that idea comes from ignorance of "the other side" rather than the reality of the situation. People on the left and right are incredibly ignorant of what the other side actually wants and is doing. Half the media would go bankrupt if that changed.
  - roumenguha 1mo ago
    People have both personal and social interests; the latter can overcome the former in a system that people can trust. (Not saying that we have that right now, or ever have)
  - bequanna 1mo ago
    Generations before Boomers crafted policy that considered the future beyond them (children and grandchildren). Boomers do not follow that tradition.

bob1029 1mo ago

[dead]

jubilanti 1mo ago

Just going to leave this graph of reserves over time here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp/1280px-US_Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve.webp.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...

flutas 1mo ago
Never mind this > On March 19, 2020, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Energy to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to maximum capacity, when oil was priced at $24 per barrel. This directive was given to help support domestic oil producers given the impending economic collapse from COVID-19 and extreme drops in international oil markets. However, funding was blocked by Congress, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer stating that Democrats had blocked a "bailout for big oil". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U...
- LightBug1 1mo ago
  I'm no fan of Mr Schumer. However, perhaps he was of the opinion that US-Israel wouldn't have been as stupid as they were to go war with Iran in the way that they did.
- pingou 1mo ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. It seems like it would have been a sensible time to buy back then with such a low price, although of course government spending was already very high due to COVID.
  - jubilanti 1mo ago
    > Not sure why you’re being downvoted The only consistent position on US politics that won't get you downvoted on HN is "both parties are dumb."
    - swed420 1mo ago

hnbad 1mo ago

Wasn't this known for a while? The problem is that simply agitating the liquid already causes immense wear because these are natural caves selected for their potential as long-term storage, not active sources. Not to mention that draining them reduces the quality of the remaining oil (much like how you never want to feed an engine from the bottom of a diesel tank). It's also my understanding that the problem is not just the reserves being drained, let alone drained so much, but also how rapidly they were drained because that again makes things worse.

tcfhgj 1mo ago

maybe a good time to say fare well to relying on fossil fuels for energy storage

raphinou 1mo ago

This is probably a naive question, but I'm wondering: isn't the usefulness of a reserve seriously diminished if using it prevents refilling it afterwards? What was the use case covered by this huge reserve if only a small part can be used before geopardising its future?

jubilanti 1mo ago
> What was the use case covered by this huge reserve if only a small part can be used before geopardising its future? Total global war (WWII style), total economic collapse (1929 style), and other kinds of not-even-once-in-a-generation multi-year catastrophes. Voters getting angry about the price of gas is not one of them.

LightBug1 1mo ago

Question: I don't know much about US oil, but hasn't Trump been bragging endlessly about being oil independent? If so, why is this a story?

WarmWash 1mo ago
The amount the US produces is a larger number than the amount that the US consumes. But what the US produces is not necessarily what the US consumes. Oil markets are global and there is tons of trading going on, so it's not really at all a "fully in house" operation.
- lokar 1mo ago
  Even if US refineries used light crude, the producers sell to the highest bidder.
hvb2 1mo ago
Because what the US produces is just a kind of oil. Not all oil is the same, IIRC the US produces mostly light crude. Releasing barrels lowers the price but it's obviously only a temporary measure. I think it's a story as the cease fire with Iran is about to run out
aw1621107 1mo ago
Oil self-sufficiency isn't quite as simple as oil production > oil exports because not all crude is the same and refineries generally aren't completely crude-type-agnostic. IIRC US refineries prefer processing "heavy" (higher proportion of longer hydrocarbons) and "sour" (higher sulfur proportion) crude but most US production is "light" (higher proportion of shorter hydrocarbons) and "sweet" (lower sulfur proportion), so as a result the US still ends up importing/exporting a bunch of crude.
adrian_b 1mo ago
USA exports a lot of oil, but that cannot be used by the US oil refineries, which need to import oil, or take it from reserves. Therefore USA is not oil independent, despite being a net exporter.

naveen99 1mo ago

They should just securitize middle Easter oil and let us government buy some of it. I guess Saudi aramco was a step in that direction.

OutOfHere 1mo ago

US Crude Oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Stocks (I:USCOSPRE) 298.69M bbl for Wk of Aug 07 2026 https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil_in_the_strategic_petroleum_reserve https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil...

sebazzz 1mo ago

So natural caverns - empty spaces in the Earth - are used to store oil, but they shouldn’t be drained because it damages them permanently. Can anyone explain why it is useful as storage then? It is like a battery you arent allowed to discharge past 30%.

bdcs 1mo ago
Perhaps the more apt analogy is not a battery but a canister of petrol. Kidding aside, even one-time use energy storage can be useful during catastrophic events (war, etc)
greycol 1mo ago
Engineering considerations in favour of this setup: The cost of that 30% oil loss is less than engineering/site selection of a system that can be fully drained. The cost of a more robust system that isn't as damaged by use is higher over it's lifetime assuming the *Emergency* use case than just creating/prospecting replacement damageable reserves if necessary. If someone wanted a small reserve for 'market stabilizing' short term and repetitive small fill/drains they could build it for a lower cost than making the emergency reserve resilient enough to serve this purpose. Can't claim these are true in this case but also remember that norms were much more enforced at this time and voter could be expected to punish bad politicians (This was a couple of years after watergate) so expecting political parties to hold short sited/corrupt politicians to account when they were doing something visible may have influenced what they expected to happen to a "get me reelected on lower gas prices damn the consequences politician". So the main concern could easily be the stated 1 or 2 emergency drawdowns in the next century and we'll over engineer it so it can handle 5.

nojvek 1mo ago

Trump may be the catalyst to renewable energy acceleration. If gas is so obscenely expensive, then economics can play its natural course. US gas prices have been subsidized for so long. Now Trump’s war is getting gasonline to realistic prices.