The Trump administration is dipping its toe—barely—into refilling the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), announcing plans to purchase one million barrels of crude for delivery in December and January. The move, while symbolically significant, amounts to little more than a rounding error in a reserve that once held 700 million barrels.
The Department of Energy will use $171 million from President Trump’s new tax and spending law to fund the purchase, issuing a solicitation for crude to be delivered to the Bayou Choctaw site in Louisiana. Bids are due by October 28, with contracts tied to spot market prices.
At around $58 per barrel, the timing is opportunistic. WTI has fallen roughly 30% since January amid swelling inventories, record U.S. production of 13.6 million bpd, and a global supply glut that has traders talking about $50 crude again.
The SPR—America’s emergency oil cushion—was gutted during the Biden years, when 180 million barrels were released to tame gasoline prices. That drawdown left the reserve at its lowest level in four decades, around 395 million barrels.
Refilling it won’t be cheap or quick. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said it could take years and as much as $20 billion to rebuild the stockpile. Congress has since pushed through $1.3 billion in funding for refills and maintenance while repealing the mandatory drawdowns that raided the reserve in prior years.
Still, a one-million-barrel purchase is more political gesture than energy strategy. With maintenance delays pushing other scheduled deliveries into late 2025, and each government buy signaling to traders that prices could rise, Washington is walking a fine line between refilling reserves and fueling another rally.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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