> 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".
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.
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.
It shows massive withdrawals mainly in 2022 after lighter withdrawals in 2021, before a period of refilling; and then even more rapid withdrawals in 2026.
I believe 2021 and some of 2022 was a response to inflation from COVID, and 2022 was obviously also the year Russian oil went off the market. 2026 is the Iran war.
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.”
“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.
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?
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?
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.
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
> 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 they are running it into the ground like every other "critical national security asset".
Just going to leave this graph of reserves over time here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...
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_(U...
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.
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.
Read it for yourself.
To me this shows massive withdrawals in 2021-2022 and again in the last two years.
On the news they said it was not really meant to be drained and filled many times. Also, not expected to last as long as it has.
It shows massive withdrawals mainly in 2022 after lighter withdrawals in 2021, before a period of refilling; and then even more rapid withdrawals in 2026.
I believe 2021 and some of 2022 was a response to inflation from COVID, and 2022 was obviously also the year Russian oil went off the market. 2026 is the Iran war.
> 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.
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...
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.”
“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.
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?
Knowable but not admittable, maybe
for some reason, US government really love to pounce on middle east
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
maybe a good time to say fare well to relying on fossil fuels for energy storage
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?
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.
yesterday: 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
Boomer politics has always been about me and not thee.
> 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 they are running it into the ground like every other "critical national security asset".