Biden Depletes Strategic Petroleum Reserve As US Stumbles Towards War, 4010

Resident Biden announced that he was going to sell off an additional 26 million barrels of crude from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve or about 8%.

Biden & company sold off 180 million barrels of crude last year in an attempt to lower gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This new sale will bring our reserve down to 345 million barrels, the lowest in 40 years.

The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day. So this strategic reserve is only a 17-day supply. However, the U.S. currently produces about 12 million barrels per day – 8 million barrels short of our usage. At that burn rate, our strategic supply would hold out for only 43 days.

The SPR was created in 1975 when oil-producing nations tried to force the U.S. to make certain concessions by limiting the amount of oil they would produce. These were the Jimmy Carter days of long gas lines at gas stations.

The oil is stored under unique circumstances – in salt domes between 2,000 and 4,000 feet deep in naturally-occurring salt formations, that are hollowed out to form caverns by drilling into the salt formation, then injecting water into the bore hole to gradually create very precise-shaped caverns. These caverns look like this.