Trump tries refilling critical fuel stockpile, but Biden’s drain may do lasting damage, experts say

During his inaugural address, President Donald Trump stated that he would “fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top.” It was one of the few policy goals that Trump promised but didn’t put into any of his many executive orders he signed since taking office. Instead, Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright plans to seek up to $20 billion from Congress to replenish the nation’s energy stockpile known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). 

Wright told Bloomberg News last week during a tour of a natural-gas export plant in Louisiana that the effort would take years, but it would result in the SPR going back to “just close to the top.” 

While former President Joe Biden wasn’t the only president to use the petroleum reserve for political reasons, he drained it more than any president before him. The frequent draws and refills — the latest of which will be the largest refilling effort in its history — may be threatening the structural integrity of the reserve, experts say. 

Ups and downs

The SPR was created in response to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo against the United States, which triggered an energy crisis and caused a historic recession. President Gerald Ford signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which created the SPR to provide a stockpile of energy supplies should the nation need it in the event of supply disruptions. These crude oil reserves are stored in 62 salt caverns that are 200 feet wide and over 2,500 deep in the ground. 

The reserves have been tapped for a variety of reasons over the years, and some of the oil was released for exchange agreements, which function like a loan. The loan is given in barrels of oil, and those barrels are repaid at a specific date with interest.

While the main purpose of the SPR was to provide a stockpile to minimize the impacts of supply disruptions, presidents have often used it to mitigate high oil prices, especially during an election season. Former President Joe Biden tapped the reserve more than any other president as a means of price control. 

In June 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the average retail price of gasoline in the U.S. was nearly $4.30 per gallon. With the midterms approaching, the high cost of gas threatened to push more voters toward Republican candidates. In an effort to bring those prices down, Biden began draining the SPR.

Ambitious claims

When Biden took office in January 2021, the SPR contained over 638 million barrels of oil, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In June 2023, it was down to nearly 347 million barrels. It currently stands at 395 million barrels.

In March of last year, former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the SPR would be refilled by the end of last year. It seemed at the time a rather ambitious claim, but a series of Department of Energy announcements on oil buys in the following months showed what she really meant by the statement.

After a series of these buys over several months, the Department of Energy was proclaiming in November that it had added 20 million more barrels than the 180 million barrels sold under Biden’s 2022 emergency declaration following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yet the DOE had only purchased 59 million barrels. 

Granholm’s DOE added to this amount another 140 million barrels that were set to be released. But the DOE had worked with Congress to cancel those sales. So it appears that when Granholm claimed the SPR would be refilled by the end of 2024, she meant that combined with canceled sales, the buys would equal more than the 180 million barrels Biden sold under his emergency declaration. 

Physical storage areas experience shrinkage

David Blackmon, an energy analyst who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, told Just the News that these draws and fills of the SPR threaten the structural integrity of the salt caverns where the oil is stored. Should presidents continue to use the SPR for political goals, Blackmon said, that could become a big problem. 

“This is a habit they’re going to have to break. Either that, or they’re going to have to find some additional storage for all the oil that is supposed to be used for national security purposes,” Blackmon said. 

Salt domes are an ideal storage formation because they don’t react with the oil and they’re self-healing. The storage sites were intended to be used for 25 years, and at one time sonic measurements estimated a total capacity of 727 million barrels. 

The multiple drawdowns cause the caverns to deform, as does the constant geological pressure they are under. The caverns are estimated to shrink by 2 million barrels per year, but according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), the shrinkage could be even greater. 

Slow and steady 

Trump’s DOE will also have to strike an economic balance in the course of bringing the SPR back to the level it was before Biden drained it. Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer and editor-in-chief of Shale Magazine, told Just the News that passing the legislation for the purchases shouldn’t be a problem. 

“The challenge will be trying to keep oil prices stable while doing so. The refill will pull barrels off the market and put upward pressure on prices. So it will have to be done slowly,” Rapier said. 

As the former CEO of the oil and gas company Liberty Energy, Secretary Wright is likely aware of that economic impact. And it’s likely why he said the effort would take years to refill. Once it’s topped off, time will tell if future administrations leave it untouched except for national emergencies.