
Congress in 1975 enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (“EPCA“), creating the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Act attempts to shield the U.S. economy from oil supply shocks, including those engineered by oil-exporting countries. Reserves can only be released if “severe energy supply interruptions” exist.

Strategic Petroleum Reserves Depletion
The Biden administration has continually released strategic reserves since 2021 under an emergency drawdown. The petroleum reserve has dropped from its historic high by 45%, its lowest level since 1983. However, the release of those reserves doesn’t qualify under the EPCA. The law also requires those sales revenues to be deposited to the SPR Petroleum Account to be preserved for repurchasing the oil. Did the US Treasury pocket those monies?

Reserves were released to reduce high oil prices caused by the US and EU sanctions against Russian oil sales that disrupted global supply chains. Secondarily, the drawdowns were to reduce inflation caused by Biden’s reckless fiscal policies and to benefit the Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections. Now that the SPR releases have stopped, oil futures contracts have spiked in the last three months from $65 per barrel to $92, a whopping 41% increase.
The depletion of U.S. strategic stockpiles increases the market power of OPEC, Russia, and other oil exporters. The lower the reserves become, the more likely exporters will respond with smaller exports, further pushing global oil prices. Biden’s refusal to expand domestic production on public lands, delay and cancel leases, block the almost completed Keystone pipeline, and excoriate oil and gas producers exponentially compounds the problem.
The rising oil price inflation has caught the attention of the Biden administration, and it is exploring solutions to increase supply. Biden’s threat to punish the Saudis for failing to increase supply eliminates OPEC+ cooperation. The administration’s only option is to continue to drain the SPR.
EPCA was amended in November of 2000, providing that storage can be expanded from roughly 727 million barrels to 1 billion barrels and fill the SPR to a one billion barrel capacity. The US Department of Energy submitted a plan to Congress in June 2007, which failed to provide the necessary appropriation to construct additional capacity.

SPR Salt Caverns at Risk
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ study concluded:
โmultiple drawdowns have caused cavern deformation, salt falls and other damage to the cavern integrity. In addition, these underground salt caverns are shrinking due to tectonic stresses. The SPR office estimates that for every 100 barrels of oil removed, there are 15 barrels of dissolved salt undermining the cavern’s structure.โ
Biden’s imprudent large monthly draws damage the caverns, causing deformation and shrinkage. Notably, in 2000, the SPR office estimated the facilities have a remaining life span of twenty-five years, assuming routine maintenance. That expiration date is rapidly approaching.
There has yet to be a public discussion or policy debate on cavern degradation that reduces the capacity and the caverns’ short life. Replacing the existing caverns and filling them to one billion barrels capacity is paramount to the US economy and national defense.
Energy is the Economy
Prepare for 1970’s disastrous style of price controls to counter runaway inflation, guaranteeing further shortages. Domestic oil capacity can be increased, lowering prices, with an energy policy opposite the Biden Administration’s ruinous philosophy.
Bob Bishop is a forensic investigator and a retired CPA. His social media accounts are LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
More destruction of our nation by the FJB Administration.
It’s yet another devious plan by America’s enemies to undermine our God-given homelands.
I’m with you Mike. They’re clearly driving up the price of oil so that we drive ourselves down into collapsing caverns of salt pillars. Best solution would be another invasion and resource takeover. Not Russia, they’re too tough a nut to crack. Saudi Arabia’s our best bet. After all, didn;t Bush and Cheney already pass those laws, that anyone messing with our energy security is a legit target? The number one rule of the Rules-based international order, I believe. Good thing Germany never passed any law like that, otherwise we’d have had to unpass it.
Pick a fight you can maybe win. Go after Canada
Fred, in Spanish we would be tocayo.
Being a faithful resident of the oil producing region of Canada may I please suggest that, instead of fighting us, you just make us an offer? I think you will find a lot of willingness to negotiate to everyone’s satisfaction! No need for nasty wars and the embarrassment of guns that have no ammunition.
Remember… for us, President Biden is a step up.
USA already owns Canada – no need to invade, our puppydog PM will give the Americans anything they ask….and if he should lose the next elections, his replacement will do the same.
Those enemies of America deviously undermining America, seem to an outsider, to be mostly people the Americans elected, ably guided, supported and funded by extremely wealthy American Sociopaths, called Donors.
Que dios nos ha dado! Que barbaridad….
There is a lot of politics in worries about the strategic reserve, lots of misunderstanding.
1. If the Salt Caverns are at risk – then the stupidest thing to do would be to refill them knowing that you couldn’t take the petrol out again because the caverns would collapse.
2. Most oil is traded for dates in the future
https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/energy/crude-oil/light-sweet-crude.quotes.html
Only that small proportion of oil that is not pre-bought and pre-sold is traded on the spot market.
So Spot oil is famous for being subject to very short term price squeezes and collapses (couple of years ago spot oil was negative for a week or so).
Oil for delivery in 12 months time is $10 cheaper than oil now. Petrol will be similar.
Why on earth would the Strategic reserve be buying back petrol today precisely during a short term shortage with unnaturally high prices.
At the very least it should buy back a year forward and keep it in someone else’s storage facilities where it can be retrieved, not these dodgy caverns.
A year forward contract is for crude that’s not yet been pumped out of the ground.
And that squeeze was for an expiring near-month futures contract. If whoever buys crude via futures doesn’t sell it by the contract’s expiration, they’re bound to pay and accept delivery of the physical crude itself at the contracted price. In that case, the final buyer ended up actually being paid by the seller (ergo negative price) in order to take the crude off his hands. A real hot potato it was.
That would require actual competence, which the Brandon Gang lacks. They are only good at short term/short distance vision, and that which kowtows to Klaus Schawb & Co.
It’s a good thing Baerbock isn’t proposing an SPR for Germany. She’s start drilling and end up right back where she started.
The more they do shit like this, the more and more I start to believe that Western elites are also pushing for the multi-polarity, it makes some minor sense, but is still very strange…
Absolutely not! That negative is tied up in the concept that western elites have largely joined the WEF policies of degrading technocracies to “save the planet” from climate change (carbon dioxide and energy from fossil fuels reduced, also including nitrogen, etc); and it includes the deindustrialising programs and the reductions to our cities and industries. It does not make sense and of course there is an agenda behind these agendas to reduce the footprint of human populations – for political rather than ecological goals. This is a political movement, well financed and appears (and is) nihilistic in their impacts on us. They are also a faction within these captured governments EU, to Five Eyes, to the USA and see contradictory policies in destruction that collaborates what Stephen F. Cohen (RIP) as a Washington that it is “ungovernable”. An EU and USA that is deindustrialising cannot go on a production war footing with a shrinking industrial base. This is one of the main reasons that Putin has a “go slow policy” with his war against Ukraine. The recent decline in Polish support for Ukraine also illustrates this trend. Western civilization is at war with itself and its policies support this decline. Most of these governments are led or have a fifth column faction that routinely attacks domestic infrastructure on all fronts.
And you would be correct in concluding that the elites are mad and are essentially self destructing themselves with these policies. Google the list of WEF members and this madness will make more sense.
Maybe if they didn’t tax us so much we would not have to work so much” like 7 days a week
Mr. Johnson your reference to the sainted Professor Stephen Cohen confirms your status in my eyes as a legitimate Master of the Universe. If only we had paid attention to his wisdom.
When people ask me the future of America? This is it. The slow decline. The degradation of infrastructure. It is inevitable. Between government contracts that mandate union scum, and worrying about the rare spotted yellow bellied horny toad? And the engineering staff having to have one black, one tranny, one gay, etc.? The Not In My Back Yard everywhere? We can’t even figure out where to put the nuclear waste that is just sitting in drums at facilities.
We will never build another Hoover Dam. We could not recreate the highway system now. Look at our trains and subways versus Russia’s and China’s.
It will just be a congealing pool of entropy that thickens every day, every week, every year. As the dinosaur staggers forward in an increasingly eccentric manner. It’s brain dead, but the signals still travelling the millions of miles of neural link.
But the good news is that the US military death machine dies also. See? I’m a silver lining kinda guy.
Amen and Amen, brother! 100% correct!
more and more this scenario seems plausible:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/21/aciy-s21.html
purposeful societal collapse
Demolishing industry/ forestry/ agriculture/ borders
Abandoning citizens to crime and enacting laws that protect the criminals.
Criminalizing parents and threatened with loss of their children if they don’t advocate sex change for their kids.
All while watching the Vampire Class syphon the last wealth, knowing they are eyeing little kids for sex and organs.
The idiocracy has reached critical mass as many lie down for this BS to continue. What a massive disappointment.
what have we become
said the father to his son
we have failed to respond to
the battles they have won
we have turned our heads.
in hopes they do not tread
on what little we have left
as we eat our daily bread
It is hard to comprehend
our willingness to bend
as we shamble toward the end
of all that was
Personally Strategic Reserves are just that. They are not to be touched for anything other than national emergency. Rotating stocks I can understand but releasing them without replenishment schedules is bizarre. Congress should have oversight and an independent National Security Agency
This is like the Teapot Dome Scandal
But what if china does not to be paid in dollars only, how do we get our meds , and if we don’t get our meds you are going to see a real $hit show.
Yeah, you have to wonder just exactly why big oil wanted Russia pipelines destroyed and for Russia to not sell anything to the US private fossil fuel market over in the EU with depletion like it is.
Just two years ago during the Covid lock down the price of a barrel of oil went down to $0 dollars. There is no gas shortage and the US doesnโt need Saudi oil for anything anymore but price fixing since the US price fixes too. US oil companies are very happy when OPEC hikes the price of oil. If weโre not careful we might end up with another โglut of oilโ in the market, like what happened in back 1984.
Yeah, genius at work: lower fuel prices by depleting an emergency oil reserve so the consumer savings can fund electric vehicle purchases.
Not to worry. President Biden just explained why it’s mandatory to release oil from the reserves during his tenure. He explained that just like the cooking oil in your pantry, crude oil spoils with time and has to be used by a certain date.
And you guys keep accusing our president of not being ‘all there’. I beg to sniffer.
That makes sense to me, not that I have any background in geology or oil or strategic petroleum reserves…
It reminds me that when my dentist told me that a very old large metal filling was shrinking and I would eventually need a crown because the lack of support from the shrinking filling meant that the tooth would eventually crack under pressure of daily use and collapse. I asked about doing a preventive measure…..removing the filling carefully and replacing it with a new modern filling before the inevitable occurred. Of course a tooth is not a delicate salt dome and was able to withstand the careful removal and refill. So it worked.
Joe Biden doesn’t understand consequences. He’s exceptional…he can drain the salt domes and its physical integrity will magically remain in place. He’s the guy who wanted to divide Iraq into 3 parts based on sectarian divisions of Shia Sunni and Kurd. Not stopping to think that some families were mixed. Wes Clark at the time asked exactly which streets would mark the divisions.
He’s one dumbass on threatening Russia and China and the rest of the world with the sanctions, the threats the theft of reserves. BRICS SCO etc are flowering!
A Houston mayor back in the 1980’s said a very dumb thing and the powerful developer back then was quoted saying “I like my mayor’s dumb but not that dumb”.
Well I guess Raytheon, Lockheed et al like their presidents dumb….but there will be a reckoning one day given how reckless and corrupt and dumb this government is.
I have experience in salt dome storage.
Think of the Zechstein salt, as like an underground toffee sphere. Like toffee it creeps. The salt dome is ‘hollowed out’ by pumping water down and saturated salt water out – control of such a seemingly simple process is complicated. When created flask is full of gas or oil at optimum internal pressure, it means that although the walls still move, the pressure equalisation reduces this to very small changes. However, take away the internal pressure for some time, formation creeps and deforms from a spherical flask shape to irregular squashed shape – like two hands around an orange crushing it. Left long enough there are other problems necessitating abandonment and creation of another underground sphere. Against gazillions of dollars for a lead balloon project in Ukraine, the cost of new facilities is, well, trivial.
….and just think, all that molten salt being removed for new crude storage can be used to cool all the advanced nuclear reactors that aren’t being built.
Is that why Putin was so hell-bent on taking Soledar, because he thought Biden was storing Syria’s stolen oil in there?
Molten salt! Wot?
Comments like this generally occur when someone falls off the turnip wagon once too often.
Otherwise, oh no. Not another ‘we are all going to die in three years, due to (insert latest in vogue coming disaster) punter.
Warm water in. Warm salty water out. Result – a cavern / flask / sphere within the massive salt.
And no moon rock used in the process.
(Hot) Nuclear reactors corrode like fu. . fu .. fury when they meet chlorides! No heavy metals are allowed into reactors when under construction. We had to tape up gold rings and such, plus wear separate coveralls just to enter the construction areas.
Read up on how Hunterston allowed 6,000 gal of seawater inside when reactor cooling down – 15 yrs of corrosion in twenty mins to lower plenum chamber.
Now back to your molten ice cream, and stand on your left leg – you alone know it makes sense.
You’re an American, right? The arrogance coupled with cluelessness gives you away. Read and learn about ‘molten salt’, bucko.
https://www.iaea.org/topics/molten-salt-reactors
Sheesh
Creepy salt? Sounds like a natural match for the creepy Biden family.
I don’t buy the collapsing spiel. The most prolific crude oil reservoirs are those trapped by salt domes. An oversimplification but …once crude is pumped from the crude reservoirs, the adjacent salt allegedly would seek to fill the void, therefore creating a void between cap rock and salt, weakening the cap rock and initiating a collapse, similar to what emptying an artificial salt storage cavern would do, as the author proposes, as I understand him. But it doesn’t. Why? Because the cap rock above is sufficiently strong and because the salt itself is not under enough external pressure (just gravity?) to force a major migration. The worst that happens is that salt sloughs off the sides of the cavern as it’s emptied, which doesn’t change its volume, just its geometry.
With my own eyes, I have seen salt extruding out of, coming up and out of 3 1/2 inch production tubing from 10,000 ft down – Central North Sea. Gravity, right. You work it out.
Reservoir pressure pushing the salt core out of a drill pipe. What’s that have to do with the price of apples in Hong Kong?
So it is true. Ukraine is winning the war.
Biden’s stated goal is to get rid of fossil fuels, part of the WEF agenda to effectively imprison everybody by eliminating mobility. He could, for example, allow/encourage increased drilling, but he has been adding increasing restrictions instead of easing up. He wants America to run out of fuel so we’ll all have to switch to electric cars that have no range and limited options for charging from a grid that can’t support it.
The objective is obvious. In the end, with the “climate” agenda as cover, we’ll see effective rationing so “important” people will get all they need and the rest of us nothing. All part of the “15 minute city” strategy where we’ll be stuck in our communities like prisoners.
It’s all part of the plan. From the perspective of what’s good for ordinary people it looks like plain stupidity, but we have to remember the people pulling the strings have billions of dollars and a not-so-secret agenda. Climate change, open borders, rampant crime, are all part of the design. Create chaos, then introduce martial law, rationing, etc. It isn’t like this hasn’t been done before elsewhere.
They don’t even seem to be worried about the next election, Nancy is even running again. As many have commented, 2020 was just the warm-up/trial run for widespread election malfeasance. We can look forward to the election variant of COVID, plus climate change, plus all brand of other “emergency” to support either cheat-by-mail or no election at all. The Democrats play for keeps, the GOP seem clueless and so far behind the curve it’s pathetic.
Garland was smirking at his testimony when Republicans were hammering him. They’re all acting like the fix is already in, just like Kamal-toe was when she was cackling before the last election. The question is not about whether the storage caverns collapse, but why they’re doing all this to start with. The SPR is just a symptom.
Well stated Mac. It is all about control. All of the electric cars have computerized kill switches. Driving to the big antigovernment parade in Washington DC? No, you’re not. The vaccines. It is about training the sheep to obey. They could give a fuck how many die. And the biggie? Who cares if there is a big economic blowup because that will be the excuse to put digital currency in. And then they own you, body and soul. Every purchase. Every bit of trave logged. And they can just turn you OFF. Try to do anything without money. My one bit of advice is buy gold and silver. It will be the only out.
EV’s in the northern states in winter go almost half as far as the same EVs in southern states, (battery efficiency drop off with temp).
Plus, the Chinese will be the EV kings soon and the US has frozen them out of the market. Lots of disconnects for EV dominance in the US in the near future, to my way of thinking.
Bidenโs stated goal is to get rid of fossil fuels
Too bad his goal isn’t simply to get rid of fossils. He could start with himself and then move on to clean out half of Congress. Well, one can dream, can’t one?
We need to get rid of fossil fools!
โ โ โ โ
He could, for example listen to David Blume
The money probably went to Ukraine. Even if Congress found out they’d do nothing.
I blame communists.
I blame the inbred stupidity of America’s political class.
The Left’s fundamental transformation of America. Create a crisis, then regulate the change they always wanted.
โAprรจs nous, le dรฉluge !โ
โ Joseph Robinet Biden, Sun King
From the “grand strategy” gamer point of view, industrial wars are won or lost by annihilating the ennemy supply chain and/or ennemy manpower faster than the ennemy.
“Eisen und Blut” as Bismark said once.
We are back to the basics !
Another BS article written by a โforensic investigatorโ/CPA who doesnโt know crap about engineering, construction, natural gas or any other idiot claim he made in this article.
Even the โpoliticalโ arguments a child could eliminate easily.
You all are not doing Larry any favors promoting these kind of feckless idiot articles written by know-nothing-posers .
When Larry posts or writes actual very worthy, validated, and usually excellent insights and analysis, I say so.
But not calling out this dribble and its source isnโt doing Larry any favors.
Heโs not looking for drone followersโฆ
And by the wayโฆjust for ease of mind, these will last much longer than the โlicensedโ 25 year markโฆ
Hi there. Iโm not a geologist or petroleum engineer, so I donโt know squat about the structural integrity of the salt caverns housing the SPR
Would you be kind enough to explain why you believe this article is based on faulty assumptions and therefore draws incorrect conclusions?
If youโre going to disagree, bring the math, physics, and chemistry
Thanks
Talk about a conversation stopper! Awesome dude! Completely concur. As for this shitshow called America, itโs pointless to give air to this shit, like the F35 with the worthless hairy crab driving it, they got this crap on autopilot, you just gotta keep outta da way!
Excellent comments, Mr. Bishop. Thank you. I wasn’t aware that the storage infrastructure itself was falling apart. Doesn’t surprise me.
I hope you don’t mind me also adding some other relevant facts about how dangerously low the SPR is:
When the Obama/Biden regime came to power in January 2021, there was about ~640 million barrels of crude in the SPR. There are now ~351 million barrels. Almost 300 million barrels have been released in just 2.5 years. Just astonishing.
As I understand it, the US consumes ~12 million barrels of crude oil per day (+ another 8 million gas). Using the current level of ~351 million barrels and the 12 million bpd number, the US currently has just ~29 days crude in reserve. The IAE recommends that nations maintain a reserve of at least 90 days net imports of crude. Again, astonishing and actually quite frightening, if you’re an American.
Difficult to see how the US sustains a war against any nation with such a low reserve of crude stored in deteriorating facilities, and certainly not against China.
Note that not all of that crude legally belongs to the US. For example, in 2020 the Australians purchased $100 million AUD of oil at very low prices, and agreed to keep it stored in the US SPR. I’m not sure if other nations have done this but it’s relevant.
Thank you again for such an interesting piece.
“For example, in 2020 the Australians purchased $100 million AUD of oil at very low prices, and agreed to keep it stored in the US SPR.”
And our brilliant, ethical, honest to a fault “government” never stole anything from anybody. Least of all from a friend & ally…
Not only is the Brandon Administration doing everything they can to create NEW problems for America, they have not been good stewards of the resources we have and which were entrusted to that Administration. There are many ways to screw the American People, and Brandon’s gang has excelled at that.
I have no disagreement with the facts presented by Mr. Bishop.
I would ask the question:
Since when has the ruling elite / TPTB ever cared about the welfare of the great unwashed masses?
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve issue is irrelevant to those who rule over us.
If the Bosses didn’t like the way things are, they would change it.
Perhaps the Bosses will build more bridges for the homeless to live under?
What you say is true. Somewhere in the emergence of railroad barons and oil barons Americans lost control to Oligarchs and their servant class – the lawyers
Pushing renewables at the cost of the folk that will suffer the most.
Their plan is very simple. Just get rid of the folk. Just that simple.
And we, the folk, should just do that. Get rid of them!
They are playing the grand chessboard. Mankind are the pieces. They have the money. And with the money everthing else. Media, politics, military, sience, ngo’s, the majority their puppets.
Do we have time left? Not much until it’s too late for our society to live as WE want. Not they dictate. USA the land of the free. Then show us, the rest of the world, what free man can do to stay free!
i wonder about the same effect on oil drawn from underground. but i really cannot take a forensic ex cpa seriously on any matters outside taxation. But it is good someone is bringing this issue up.
Indeed. It focuses attention on the SPR and then begs the question, why is the Biden administration using a bandaid fix on oil prices (and most everything in general), possibly just for political gain and not addressing the core causes. Sort of reminds you of Biden’s support of big city mayors using the same bandaid fixes of their collapsing realms. Then you begin to wonder if some of those core issues with bandaids slapped on them weren’t originally created or exacerbated by the bandaiders themselves.
Then you wonder if those same Biden supporters might have more than a healthy desire to keep printing dollar bill bandaids, whether it be for the UA or the US. It looks like some House Republicans are starting to get a bit nervous about all this bandaid therapy and rightly so.
Remember the Bayou Corne salt dome collapse? Better yet, Lake Peigneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWRO2pyLA8
Interesting video. I suppose if an empty SPR crude storage site in a salt dome had a lake above it and some wildcatter decided to drill through the lake and into the storage cavity either by mistake or on purpose (maybe hoping to later steal Syria’s , oops I mean America’s oil), then I suppose when the lake emptied into the SPR storage cavity, it could make a big mess. But that would be a collapse of the lake and not of the storage cavity, except it’d end up storing lake water and drill rigs and stuff like what happened in the salt mine instead of SPR oil.
But if a salt mine collapsed, why wouldn’t an SPR storage site collapse too when improperly drilled into by a would be thief, a dope or a government official? (was I being redundant?). Well, nothing’s impossible but if you look at Larry’s SPR depiction, the storage cavities are vertically oriented with no ‘support columns’ to be eroded, unlike the horizontal salt mine with salt support columns that the gushing lake water eroded, leading to partial mine collapse and a huge sinkhole and a new lake 20 times deeper than the original.
As usual in Corrupt USA, no one will ever be held accountable for this.
Don’t worry everyone we are all safe, there is a plan for the future.
The A Team have the new SPR covered with operation “Alberta”.
Then again….
I am a little concerned that B Team now refers to Keystone as “Nordstream 3”.