On March 11, President Donald Trump announced plans to release 172 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The move is part of a coordinated response by the 32-member nations of the International Energy Agency to add 400 million barrels of supply to partially offset the disruption in shipments from the Middle East due to the war in Iran.
One-fifth of the world’s crude oil supply transits through the Strait of Hormuz, the only waterway between the Persian Gulf and the open ocean. Iran has successfully halted most marine traffic through the strait, constraining oil supplies and driving crude prices sharply higher. The releases from the strategic reserves are intended to mitigate the price shock and the inevitable pain at the gas pump.
Yet news of the additional supply has had little effect. In fact, crude oil prices rose an additional 15% in the week following the announcement. The immense scale of the global energy infrastructure dwarfs the effect of the planned releases, particularly since they will be spread over roughly four months. And given the resurgence of American energy production over the past decade, the entire concept of a strategic reserve is less meaningful in 2026.
In the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, a group of Western nations created the International Energy Agency to coordinate responses to supply disruptions. The agency, ratified by a formal treaty, calls on its members to maintain an inventory of at least 90 days of net oil imports and provides for a collective response to oil shocks. The United States formally created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 to comply with its obligation. The first delivery took place in July 1977 with the receipt of 412,000 barrels of Saudi crude. Today, it is the world’s largest supply of emergency oil.
With a total capacity of 714 million barrels, the reserve currently holds 415 million barrels stored in 61 salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. Salt domes have proved to be the most economical and environmentally friendly way to store large quantities of oil and natural gas, as salt does not react with petroleum and has self-healing properties that seal any microcracks in the salt walls. A typical storage cavern measures 200 feet in diameter and up to 2,550 feet in depth, enough to hold two Empire State buildings (minus the spires) end to end. The caverns are formed by injecting water and pumping out the resulting brine as the salt dissolves, a process known as solution mining, which allows for great precision in creating the cylindrical storage voids.