In his inaugural address, which was transcribed on the White House website on January 20, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “we will … fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top”.
So, just over a year later, just how full is the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)?
Well, if you take the SPR figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest weekly petroleum status report, and consider that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) website highlights that the SPR has an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels, the answer to that question is 58.17 percent full.
The EIA’s latest weekly petroleum status report, which was released on February 19 and included data for the week ending February 13, shows that there were 415.4 million barrels of oil in the SPR, as of February 13.
According to the EIA’s weekly petroleum status report, there were 415.2 million barrels in the SPR on February 6, 395.3 million barrels on February 14, 2025, and 359.5 million barrels on February 16, 2024. The February 13, 2026, figure marks a 5.1 percent increase from last year’s figure and a 15.6 percent increase from the figure two years ago, the EIA’s report highlights.
In a fact sheet posted on the DOE site last month, the energy department said it is “continuing to rebuild our strategic strength and has begun the process of refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), after it was recklessly depleted by the Biden administration with its 180 million barrel drawdown in 2022”.
The fact sheet pointed out that, in November 2025, the DOE awarded contracts for deliveries of one million barrels of crude oil for the SPR, from the Bryan Mound site, beginning December 2025 through January 2026.
“President Trump promised to protect America’s energy security by refilling and managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve more responsibly,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a DOE statement posted on the department’s website on November 12, 2025.
“Awarding these contracts marks another step in the important process of refilling this national security asset,” he added.
“While this process won’t be complete overnight, these actions are an important step in strengthening our energy security,” he continued.
In its latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released on February 10, the EIA projected that crude oil in the SPR will increase in 2026 and 2027.
The EIA forecast in this STEO that crude oil in the SPR will come in at 430.8 million barrels this year and 435.0 million barrels next year. In this STEO, the EIA highlighted that crude oil in the SPR came in at 413.4 million barrels in 2025.
In its February STEO, the EIA projected that crude oil in the SPR would come in at 418.3 million barrels in the first quarter of this year, 422.5. million barrels in the second quarter, and 426.6 million barrels in the third quarter, 430.8 million barrels in the fourth quarter, and 435.0 million barrels across all four quarters of 2027.
The EIA forecast in its previous STEO, which was released in January, that crude oil in the SPR would come in at 430.7 million barrels this year and 434.9 million barrels next year.
The SPR is described on the DOE website as the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil. The site highlights that it was established “primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program”.
“The federally owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns at four sites along the coastline of the Gulf of America,” the DOE site notes.
“The sheer size of the SPR (authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels) makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy,” the site adds.
A White House fact sheet released on March 31, 2022, which highlighted that gas prices had increased by nearly a dollar per gallon, outlined that the U.S. President at the time, Joe Biden, would announce the largest release of oil reserves in history, putting one million additional barrels on the market per day on average, every day, for the next six months.
“This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up,” that fact sheet stated.
To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com
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