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One fun fact I’ve heard is that the strategic oil reserve requires like 100-150 million barrels of oil to maintain operational pressure and even be functional.
by LPisGood 17d ago
One fun fact I’ve heard is that the strategic oil reserve requires like 100-150 million barrels of oil to maintain operational pressure and even be functional. This means we can’t draw it down to zero; not even close.
- WalterGR 17d agoAnd indeed, already: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/15/strategic-petroleum-reserve-spr-oil-iran-war-caverns.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/15/strategic-petroleum-reserve-... "Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to caverns, operations" https://fortune.com/2026/08/17/depleted-us-strategic-oil-reserves-risk-damaging-salt-caverns-iran-war/ https://fortune.com/2026/08/17/depleted-us-strategic-oil-res... “U.S. strategic reserves are getting so low the drawdown threatens to damage the 60 underground salt caverns storing American oil”
- askvictor 17d agoWhy can't they pump more water down there to create pressure?
- huurtehoog 17d agoI encourage you to do some digging using filetype:pdf on a search engine. The amount of documentation available on the SPR is fascinating. From what I found out, turns out the question of SPR design and operational limits is a complex issue to say the least. The SPR is a big system composed of many sub-systems and there are entangled legal, policy, technical issues at play. Interesting stuff!