Checking In On the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Most US citizens have heard of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is an emergency stockpile of crude oil maintained by the Department of Energy. It was initiated in 1975 as a response to the oil embargo earlier imposed on the United States in response to US involvement in the Yom Kippur war. Other countries also maintain petroleum reserves, for example China and Japan. The idea is that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could keep the Pentagon war machine running temporarily even during a war in which all imports to the country were cut off. It is not meant to act as an economic buffer, helping to stabilize oil prices (by releasing oil at price highs and buying at price lows). The US Energy Information Administration maintains charts showing how much crude oil is in the reserve. A current chart is shown above. As you can see, there is currently somewhere about 700 million barrels of oil in the reserve.