Thread

U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Falls to Lowest Level Since 1982

182 points · 234 comments · thelastgallon

brightball · 1790651317 · focus · HN ↗
Chart of strategic reserve levels since 1982, for context
<a href="https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum-reserve" rel="nofollow">https://en.macromicro.me/charts/41674/us-strategic-petroleum...
1. Avicebron · 1790651770 · focus · HN ↗
  Yikes.
2. King-Aaron · 1790652065 · focus · HN ↗
  That is just mind boggling.
3. mahboi · 1790652658 · focus · HN ↗
  Beware the Y axis not starting at 0. But it's still an insane drop.
  Highcharts.charts.forEach(chart => { if (chart) chart.yAxis.forEach(axis => axis.update({ min: 0 })); });
  1. hedora · 1790653828 · focus · HN ↗
    Though note that, for some reason, the last 250M barrels are not physically extractable from the SPR, and the red line has dropped to 284M.
    unethical_ban · 1790654279 · focus · HN ↗
    Source on that? Not doubting, just curious. If true that explains the Y axis starting there.
    hedora · 1790654519 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s in the article. They link to something explaining the range.
    At first I thought that’s why the graph zeros where it does, but it’s Y axis starts at 200M.
    leetrout · 1790654846 · focus · HN ↗
    Good summary about the physical and statutory limits
    <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/less-300-million-barrels-left-110000922.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/less-300-million-barr...
    zdragnar · 1790654389 · focus · HN ↗
    The "for some reason" is that the caverns the oil is stored in are expected to become geologically unstable if they are emptied below a certain threshold. Extract below the 250 mark, and run the risk that they will collapse and cannot be refilled.
    marcosdumay · 1790655914 · focus · HN ↗
    Not exactly "not physically extractable", but extractable only slowly, probably contaminated by water, in a way that is very expensive to refine.
    People jump over the details in normal times, but then times get abnormal and impossible things start to happen.
    fsckboy · 1790656172 · focus · HN ↗
    i don't think extracting water from gasoline would be difficult at all, but probably plenty of other contaminants possible.
    marcosdumay · 1790656825 · focus · HN ↗
    Mix a spoon of oil in a couple of glasses of water, add salt, put it a few minutes in a blender, and tell me how easy it is to retrieve the oil.
    Now scale that to millions of barrels of oil every day.
    bawolff · 1790658969 · focus · HN ↗
    isn't that how we extract oilsands? by mixing it with hot water.
    orwin · 1790671596 · focus · HN ↗
    And they are very expensive to refine compared to Brent.
    IAmBroom · 1790684977 · focus · HN ↗
    1. Wait one hour.
    2. Harvest.
    In fact, a common further down in this thread says that's exactly how they harvest all of the oil: they pressurize it with (salt)water.
    stackghost · 1790658538 · focus · HN ↗
    The red line is a percentage. Axis on the right.
    IAmBroom · 1790685126 · focus · HN ↗
    Not quite - the red line is a percentage of "total stocks". That should mean a number equal or greater than the reserve. Also, the percentage axis starts at 16, not zero, so the problem remains.
  2. leereeves · 1790690863 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a big drop, but most of it happened in 2021-2023, when reserves fell by roughly 300K from 650K to 350K. The SPR only recovered a little bit before the recent 130K drop from 415K to 285K.
    What was the SPR being used for a few years ago?
    Edit: Whoever downvoted, would you be willing to explain why?
4. pstuart · 1790653268 · focus · HN ↗
  It looks like it started to plummet in April 2022, which was on Biden's watch (disclaimer: I voted for him). It apparently was in response to supply chain shocks spiking oil prices due to the start of the war in Ukraine.
  Having the AI summarize the pros and cons of that action has valid points on both sides. But in his defense, that particular war was not of our doing, unlike the current war with Iran which was initiated impulsively.
  1. Gigachad · 1790653412 · focus · HN ↗
    Trump spoke about this publicly, promising he would "fill the reserves right up to the top", then when in power, didn't do that but instead started a war with Iran while the reserves were still low.
    It's mind boggling how stupid it all is.
    Insanity · 1790653881 · focus · HN ↗
    :s/it all/he
    andriy_koval · 1790654924 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's mind boggling how stupid it all is.
    I am not sure its stupid. My conspiracy theory is that Trump works/connected to US oil industry, who took control over Venezuela's oil and now printing record profits since all competition (Hormuz states, Russia) is suffering from infra damage.
    dualvariable · 1790658799 · focus · HN ↗
    Pumping up the oil price also helps Russia. Whatever they do manage to ship is still worth more.
    Also still plausible that Trump is managing to line his own pockets with the profits of that Venezuelan heavy crude being sent to Qatar.
    cosmicgadget · 1790705741 · focus · HN ↗
    The Venezuela thing is a long term play. Pumping US oil makes sense in isolation but if you factor the political cost it is not a slam dunk. The more likely move to benefit US oil business is to attempt the Venezuela strategy in Iran.
    I think you just need to look at the administration's rhetoric since the war started to see they were surprised by this outcome.
    andriy_koval · 1790706132 · focus · HN ↗
    > you factor the political cost
    they can keep prices using reserves until midterm, and Trump likely doesn't care what will happen after that
    > they were surprised by this outcome.
    they were surprised initially, but this is many months long story already, they had a chance to reassess situation and there is totally a chance that oil industry petitioned to not deescalate.
    cosmicgadget · 1790706837 · focus · HN ↗
    I believe they expected a Venezuela-like regime change and when that didn't happen they tried to bomb Iran into anarchy. Then there was the numerous failed negotiations. And trying to coerce allies into the folly of escort duty.
    I don't think deescalation is on the table, regardless of big oil. The one supposed deal that Iran was on board with made Trump look like a loser and he will put boots on the ground before he allows that. After midterms, of course.
    andriy_koval · 1790708178 · focus · HN ↗
    > made Trump look like a loser
    I don't think he cares, he will just declare victory as always.
    cosmicgadget · 1790708473 · focus · HN ↗
    I think he cares very deeply and will declare victory as always. Everything he does, to me, seems to be about insecure bravado.
    E.g. he seems to be in absolute shambles over his approval rating while simultaneously claiming that the "real" polls make him look great.
    pstuart · 1790718767 · focus · HN ↗
    Oil companies have owned the federal government for decades, getting free security to maximize their profits at no direct cost to them.
    As far as Venezuela is concerned, my understanding is that China is not thrilled with this deal and we've yet to see if it will actually happen. With Trump's record of actually delivering the goods, the odds are it will not.
  2. hadlock · 1790653806 · focus · HN ↗
    Selling oil out of the SPR is the new One Weird Trick Military Planners Hate! Biden was a generally fine president, but pulling oil out of the SPR to balance the budget was an extremely ugly way to do it, and hopefully that loophole gets plugged going forward.
    hedora · 1790653993 · focus · HN ↗
    Hopefully, it hits effective zero, and people start buying EVs.
    As a bonus, maybe the military will stop wasting gasoline to murder civilians, since we’ve already established they value oil over absolutely everything else, including human life.
    oyashirochama · 1790654602 · focus · HN ↗
    EVs are just as toxic due to mining techniques used at the moment, and with no effective way to recycle batteries even if they last longer than expected they aren't really a way forward completely, and baseload electricity still relies on oil and natural gas since most countries have for some reason pushed away from Nuclear as a long term non-renewable (it IS technically not renewable).
    pstuart · 1790654658 · focus · HN ↗
    I get your point and it's clear that sticks seem to be more effective than carrots, but our supply chains are not electrified and that will take time, in the meantime this pain will propagate widely.
    hedora · 1790689046 · focus · HN ↗
    True, but oil is a mostly inelastic commodity (consumers can’t really respond to price changes quickly, and neither can producers).
    So, if passenger demand halved overnight, prices for long-haul transport would implode. Even with the straits closed, tanks in the supply line would start to hit capacity, and spot prices could even go negative again.
    not2b · 1790654467 · focus · HN ↗
    That isn't why he did it, it was not "to balance the budget". It was to make up for the panic after Putin invaded Ukraine. US gasoline prices soared, going up to $4.84 per gallon in June 2022. Releasing the oil caused it to drop. It wasn't given away, it was sold. The reserve was on the way back up in 2024, through when Biden left office. Furthermore, the government turned a large profit: they sold oil when it soared in price, and bought it back at a lower price.
    tehjoker · 1790654722 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  3. partiallypro · 1790654164 · focus · HN ↗
    > that particular war was not of our doing
    Well... arguably it is partially our doing. Not for the reason's Tucker Carlson & Russia say, but that Obama and later Biden totally sat on their laurels after the Crimean invasion, totally paralyzed by fear of escalation and political fallout.
    pstuart · 1790654831 · focus · HN ↗
    arguably and partially, perhaps a bit, but they have history to back up that reluctance.
    That said, Putin's gonna do what Putin's gonna do and it likely wasn't the Crimean invasion that prompted it. It was the promise of waltzing in and just taking it without resistance.
    jcranmer · 1790655866 · focus · HN ↗
    In 2014, there was no political will in the US political system to do anything--witness Obama drawing the red line in Syria over the use of chemical weapons, and after Assad used them, Congress said "fuck off, we don't want to do anything." Given that Crimea was by far the most Russophile portion of Ukraine (it only veeeery barely voted to support Ukrainian independence in the Ukrainian independence referendum), it was much more difficult to build a case for any sort of intervention there than it would be after Syrian war crimes, and the latter wasn't enough to gain sufficient political will.
    On top of that, 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, which means that all of the foreign policy people had been brushing up on their histories of World War I and the causes of said war, which is of course the ur-example of "random event escalates to every great power at war with each other." I definitely felt like a lone voice pointing out that I was getting more World War II vibes, with Putin acting like Hitler: "I just want a little bit of X, it's the last thing I'll ask for, I promise!"
    Also, probably more important than the US reaction here is the German reaction, and Germany was in full Russian appeasement mode really right up until Russian tanks were literally rolling across the border in 2022.
    ifwinterco · 1790663752 · focus · HN ↗
    Crimea isn't just Russophilic, the majority of the population even before 2014 were ethnic Russians, the majority language was Russian, and it was part of Russia until 1954.
    People who make a big point about "Crimea is Ukraine!" are either ignorant or ideological, objectively it's at best debatable.
    (And really, there should be no slavs there at all and it should be given back to the Tatars, if anyone really wants to get into the morals...)
    expedition32 · 1790668837 · focus · HN ↗
    Countries can have different ethnicities, political parties and religions.
    But if Ukraine became prosperous and democratic it would make Putin look bad. Think West Germany against East Germany.
    ifwinterco · 1790677980 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes but that's sort of a different argument.
    My point is the 1991 borders are somewhat arbitrary: they were originally internal administrative divisions inside a larger centralised state.
    They don't necessarily represent a natural long term international border, and attaching huge moral significance to the specific strokes of a Soviet bureaucrat's pen is strange
    Paradigma11 · 1790690918 · focus · HN ↗
    Many borders are arbitrary. The moral significance results when nations go full 1900 with land grabbing invasion and all that psuedohistorical ethnic bullshit. I urge you to read the soviet propaganda for the winter war or that of the nazis and the Sudetendeutschen. It is not distinguishable from the drivel that Putin spouts.
    [deleted] · 1790695198 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    Lumich · 1790668896 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    Paradigma11 · 1790690393 · focus · HN ↗
    How was Germany in deception mode? It was Russia that invaded and everybody knew that weeks beforehand. I would hope that politicians had been preparing for that. But how would Germany in 2021 been preparing Russia to invade? Does Putin not have any agency?
    It was Russia that prepared for the invasion when they stopped supplying the gas spot market in summer 2021 and later rented gas storage but let it empty. In preparation to blackmail Germany. That didn't work out when Xi did not allow the invasion to start before his winter Olympics ended, though.
    As for the Maidan revolution. Yanukovych ran on a pro EU platform with the EU association agreement as a main goal. A few days before signing it he sold out to Putin, declared the agreement dead and called for a custom union with Belarus and Russia. No shit did people go the streets and protested.
    How exactly did the US get Yanukovych to renege on his campaign promises and start the protests?
    Lumich · 1790703696 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    Paradigma11 · 1790712439 · focus · HN ↗
    So you are saying that the Germans trained the Ukrainians against an attack that then happened. Oh the horror.....
    What are the the concrete Minsk obligations the Germans violated: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
    Not even the Russians say that Ukraine started the Donbass war. They are pretty openly celebrating Igor Girkin for starting it with the siege of Sloviansk: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sloviansk" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sloviansk
    You will have to bring some examples of Germans war preparations. They were completely unprepared for Gazproms hostile actions leading up to the war.
    Well, if Yanukovych thought that the EU deal was bad, then he should not have campaigned for it. People voted for him to get them closer to the EU and then he betrayed them.
    The Nuland/Pyatt call does not seem particularly damning to me. At that time everybody sought solutions to the political dilemma and the famous "fuck the EU" was only to express the intention to work with the UN instead of the EU, because the EU was slow and divided.
    In the Ashton Paet call, Paet only said what he had heard the day before. And it was absolutely true that he had heard that the day before. That does not make the content true and nobody claimed that.
    The Micalessin interviews seem pretty obvious fake. Documents with many grammatical errors...
    The fascinating thing is that Russians are far more comfortable with their imperialistic role than their western supporter and if you read Russian newspaper/watch television/politician speeches it becomes pretty clear that all this discussion is only for western consumption.
    Lumich · 1790766311 · focus · HN ↗
    You seem to deny there was deception. Okay. There is coherence in justifying deceptive behaviour in order to defend it.
    Girkin aka Strelkov has been in jail for over three years for “extremism”, a phony charge (he was criticizing Putin a lot for bad leadership, and continues to do so from jail). Your stating that “the Russians […] are pretty openly celebrating” him seems inadequate; while he does have supporters, they do not “celebrate” because he didn't succeed as he was left to his own devices and did not receive the Kremlin and (para)military support he was hoping for, so had to abandon Slavyansk to Kiev troops.
    The initial attack was the Feb 2014 US-led Maidan massacre and coup d'état. Turchinov started the so-called Anti-Terror Operation on April 7th. Strelkov arrived at Slavyansk on April 12th.
    I am not aware of any “hostile actions leading up to the war” by Gazprom.
    I don't think Yanukovich “betrayed” his voters more than is typical for any so-called democracy. Also, the majority of them were in the Eastern and South-Eastern parts historically close to Russia.
    Nuland/Pyatt were discussing whom to appoint to lead the country, proving the USA was behind the coup d'état. The “fuck the EU” bit is of minor importance and just shows US attitude to EU or EU member states' interests, which is perfectly known anyway.
    Paet himself had no doubts about the factfulness of what he was relating to Ashton (because he trusted the politically like-minded MD Olga Bogomolets† he'd spoken to, see 49764198=dead), and he was worried (“really disturbing”) that he was on board with something that was against his very own convictions, that is perfectly clear from the tone of his voice. And there is plenty of corroborating evidence, which the CIA/MI6-backed “new coalition” (the perps) chose to ignore, such as videos of people being hit allowing to reconstruct the snipers' position. Avakov etc even had the trees with the bullets in them cut down to destroy the forensic evidence that proved where the shots had been fired from.
    † <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olha_Bohomolets" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olha_Bohomolets – She encouraged her students to take part in the Maidan protests, received honors and positions, ran for president (but no mention of what she revealed to Paet).
    I don't know what grammar errors you're referring to, but some of the snipers were interviewed in person, there's a documentary (watched it a couple years ago so don't remember any “grammar errors”):
    Esclusivo Guerra in Ucraina, le verità nascoste • <a href="https://youtu.be/YI_eaMtsOz4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/YI_eaMtsOz4
    The Russian propaganda you're referring to is for internal consumption, of course they are in cope mode and try to instill confidence in their own population because their situation is very difficult and their leadership showed amazing incompetence in assessing the situation prior to the Feb 2022 invasion, and sent in their troops with guidelines for a “special military operation” (which they reckoned it would be, a matter of days) and not for the deadly war it turned out to be.
    Russian incompetence of stupidly marching into the trap, however, does not vindicate the other side, led by the US and the UK, who laid out the trap in the first place, in an elaborate strategic threat and deception involving, among other things, a “con game” to encourage the Kremlin into taking an action it wouldn't have dared to take. The US and their vassals who also invested into this operation sought precisely this kind of war with Ukrainians/Russians on both sides paying with their blood in order for the profit to flow to the US (in order to MAGA) by draining Europe (Germany being the main loser, of course).
    Being clever certainly helps in being a war-profiteering bloodsucker, but it doesn't make it any better.
    It is my impression that you are dismissing clear evidence, thus showing little interest in an honest debate, rather displaying your allegiance to the Western narrative (a kind of “virtue signaling”), which I think you adhere to because that's psychosocially comfortable.
    cindyllm · 1790766701 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    tpm · 1790692463 · focus · HN ↗
    It is currently proven beyond doubt Assad indeed used chemical weapons. You are most probably a Russian propaganda tool.
    see for example <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3munbtdyyqk2f" rel="nofollow">https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3munb...
    mahboi · 1790666321 · focus · HN ↗
    We were trying to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. But this started well before Biden's or even Obama's term.
    croon · 1790677486 · focus · HN ↗
    Where they attacked because they wanted in on NATO, or the reverse?
    "I need to attack Ukraine because you're trying to get it into NATO, at which point attacking it is impossible/much harder." ~Putin, probably
    NATO can be criticized for a lot, Afghanistan for example, but despite hearing the argument that Russia attacking Ukraine is NATOs fault, it's never been coherent.
    mahboi · 1790694369 · focus · HN ↗
    They weren't attacked before trying to join NATO, if that's what you mean. It goes back to 2003 at least. In 2008, Germany blocked both countries' NATO bids because they considered it aggressive against Russia.
    It's not just that Putin knew it'd be harder to attack NATO, but it was a clear signal of non-neutrality where they were previously neutral. Even if Germany would've repeatedly blocked their entry to NATO, both countries were aligning with it.
    croon · 1790706684 · focus · HN ↗
    I still don't follow. Is the assertion that the non-"neutrality" of NATO membership/alignment would mean a direct threat to Russia somehow? Because the only coherent read I can make is that the only honest objection would be that Russia would lose their ability to attack Ukraine, as well as Ukraine probably growing better resistance to vassal influence, as seen in Georgia.
    It's all circular reasoning trying to claim otherwise. "Neutrality" would be letting Ukraine fend for it self while Russia aggressively attacks their elections and implants stooges, which I frankly find absurd. Do I believe the US does something similar less crudely? Yes. Do I believe the EU or any other NATO member does? Hardly.
    jltsiren · 1790713593 · focus · HN ↗
    Russian security thinking is largely shaped by the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler, which caused terrible destruction. The biggest thing they are afraid of is an invasion from the west. That led to a doctrine, where Russia tries to surround itself with allies and puppets. When the next invasion comes, they can then start fighting against it well outside Russian territory, which should limit the damage to Russia itself.
    Under that doctrine, if you are a European country bordering Russia, your duty is to help defending Russia. You can choose whether you do that as an ally or a puppet, but you are not allowed to make any other choices.
    That's not reasonable fear, given what Europe became after WW2, but it's what Russian leaders expect. Especially those of Putin's generation, who spent their early lives preparing for a possible NATO invasion that could start WW3.
    croon · 1790765582 · focus · HN ↗
    That's much more coherent than other pitches I've heard, so it's the old post-war Stalin strategy?
    As you say, I don't buy it as a reasonable fear, but I can at least buy it as a rationalization.
    mahboi · 1790801598 · focus · HN ↗
    Finland managed to stay nonaligned until 2023, though
    jltsiren · 1790806138 · focus · HN ↗
    The Finnish situation was complicated.
    Finland and the USSR had a defensive treaty that, among other things, obligated Finland to fight against NATO if it tried to use Finnish territory or airspace to attack the USSR. There was also a Soviet military base near Helsinki that was supposed to be there until 1994. But after Khrushchev rose to power, the Soviets decided to return it for a number of reasons.
    After the USSR fell, Finland deliberately stayed out of NATO in order to maintain a good relationship with Russia. Because the popular support for NATO membership was very low, Russia apparently believed Finnish intentions. Even in late 2021, only ~25% of Finns supported joining NATO. (Six months later, that number was ~75%.)
    mahboi · 1790722994 · focus · HN ↗
    Aside from the defense agreement, NATO has implications for weapons, foreign bases, intelligence, and cooperation in wars. And all of them are exclusive, like Turkey got kicked out of the F-35 program for purchasing S-400s. Putting that in two countries bordering Russia would be leverage. USA would likewise not respond nicely to Mexico joining CSTO (well also if CSTO weren't a joke).
    mahboi · 1790752869 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh forgot to mention, the Ukrainian neutrality before meant being part of neither system. So domestic weapons and old Soviet stockpiles.
    croon · 1790765147 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, I understand the reasoning if we assume that Russia is only reactive, US is doing it out of expansionism, and Ukraine is entirely persuadable. I disagree with all those assumptions (in context).
    The question isn't why the US wants something, or why Russia wants something, it's why Ukraine wanted/wants to join NATO/EU. If you believe that's purely from US/west pressure, then agree to disagree I guess, but I'm trying to be persuaded it's not because of constant Russian aggression going back decades.
    mahboi · 1790784384 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm assuming both Russia and US had imperialist goals. Ukraine did in fact start trying to join NATO because of vague Russian threats over Crimea all the way back in the 90s. I still think the US escalated things by pursuing such strong Ukraine-NATO cooperation, especially after 2008. I'm not even complaining about US imperialism in general here, it's just that the US overestimated its limits and may have misled Ukraine.
    Yes Ukraine had their own agency, but the two empires' diplomacy matters more, which is unfortunately just how the world works. Plenty of countries would want to join NATO if assured protection, but they didn't, and that's why there isn't now a proxy war everywhere Russia (or China) has influence. The empires figured out where to draw the line in a way that angers neither side too much.
    Not sure why exactly Georgia left CSTO and started aligning with NATO in 1999. Seems they realized CSTO was a joke because it wasn't actually protecting their territory from separatist movements. Led to Russia invading Georgia while NATO gave up on it. Similar thing happened in Armenia more recently, where we've yet to see how it plays out; seems like Russia is too busy with Ukraine right now.
    salemh · 1790697409 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    cosmicgadget · 1790707076 · focus · HN ↗
    Supporting Ukraine in Crimea would have been the right thing to do but in 2014 the US was extremely war weary. Despite his dovishness with Russia, conservatives still love to claim Obama was a war monger.
    If you want to claim the Biden administration rested on its laurels in 2022, you were either not paying attention or are not participating in good faith.
  4. fsckboy · 1790657499 · focus · HN ↗
    >It looks like it started to plummet in April 2022, which was on Biden's watch. It apparently was in response to supply chain shocks spiking oil prices due to the start of the war in Ukraine.
    it wasn't simply supply chain shocks, it was supply chain shocks in a time of rampant inflation caused by the endless stimulus checks and programs after Covid.
    Supply chain shocks cause "legitimate" price increases, it's not "too many dollars chasing too few goods", rather the value of each dollar simply doesn't stretch as far any more, and while trying to hold the line on prices is a fool's errand, trying to make that case to the public in a time of rampant inflation is not going to succeed either
  5. jjk166 · 1790662072 · focus · HN ↗
    Stabilizing ourselves and our allies when an enemy attacks and disrupts petroleum supplies is why we have a strategic petroleum reserve.
    It's just incredibly dumb to start a war that will tank global petroleum supply chains before stocking back up.
  6. brightball · 1790690548 · focus · HN ↗
    It also stabilized following the elections that year.
5. safety1st · 1790653322 · focus · HN ↗
  The counterpoint is that the US is producing more crude domestically than ever with more efficient drilling technology:
  <a href="https://www.oilmonster.com/article/more-productive-wells-spur-us-crude-oil-production-higher/5538" rel="nofollow">https://www.oilmonster.com/article/more-productive-wells-spu...
  Insofar as I can tell what's really reflected here is a difference between Democrat and Republican policy positions. The Democrats want to minimize domestic environmental impact and be a net oil importer. Let someone else handle the dirty work of drilling. The Republicans are less concerned with the environmental impact and want to increase exports, oil jobs and economic sovereignty. With higher domestic production and less dependence on foreign states, such a large petroleum reserve is unnecessary.
  I prefer the Republican position. It sucks to harm the environment. But it sucks more to enable some of the regimes we import oil from. They frequently are not close allies. We frequently end up immersing ourself in wars and other entanglements over this foreign oil. You want to stop the wars, you have to stop the dependence on imported oil. (To be clear I'm not arguing that Republicans will start less wars, or are a more moral party. I am arguing in favor of domestic oil production because it removes a justification for war.)
  The Democratic position exports the moral hazard to a place where Americans don't see it. Takes it out of their backyard. But frankly that is an immoral approach which both parties have taken repeatedly and it has undermined the health of the nation. The other case where this takes place at an absolutely massive scale is exporting certain types of jobs to other countries where labor standards are lax, and where slave labor takes place. People out there killed themselves while making iPhone or your shoes because the working conditions in those countries were so horrible. I am willing to pay a little more for shoes and buy a little bit fewer luxury goods so that I don't enable slave labor. Move the jobs back onshore where we can regulate the well being of the workers. We can't control it if it's in another country.
  1. [deleted] · 1790653652 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. jmtulloss · 1790654256 · focus · HN ↗
    Your position appears to be based on crude production and drawing an equivalency between Middle East crude and US crude. They are unfortunately not equivalent. I agree that it’s amazing that the US doesn’t wholly depend on the Mideast for oil, but until we can process our own crude as cheaply as Mideast crude can be processed, strife in the Middle East will still push energy prices up.
  3. NewJazz · 1790654360 · focus · HN ↗
    The primary Democratic position is demand reduction, not importing. Also plenty of democrats have allowed drillibng and pipelines.
    leonidasrup · 1790666203 · focus · HN ↗
    Even top Democrats supported natural gas fracking.
    " President Barack Obama used his State of the Union speech to underscore the role of natural gas in transitioning to a lower-carbon nation, the White House indicated tonight.
    According to a White House briefing document issued in conjunction with the speech, Obama’s agenda for natural gas includes a call for Congress to work with the administration to create new “Sustainable Shale Gas Growth Zones” to help “regions come together to make sure shale gas is developed in a safe, responsible way that helps build diverse and resilient regional economies that can withstand boom-and-bust cycles and can be leaders in building and deploying clean energy technologies.”
    "
    <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2014/01/obama-touts-natural-gas-in-speech-182137" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2014/01/obama-to...
  4. rkagerer · 1790654382 · focus · HN ↗
    Whether or not I agree with your views, I thought your comment was thoughtfully constructed and am not sure why it's being downvoted.
    afavour · 1790654797 · focus · HN ↗
    Beware of well written statements that mask their fallacies. As a sibling comment points out, domestic oil production rose plenty during the Biden administration. Casting it as a democrat vs republican difference isn’t anywhere near the full story.
    consensus1 · 1790659623 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed you should beware: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-environment-and-nature-business-9751c4909a8b1baba28f3bcff9d5fa6e" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-environm...
    [deleted] · 1790657357 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    plorkyeran · 1790660410 · focus · HN ↗
    Posts which appear to be thoughtfully constructed while actually just being entirely incorrect about the relevant facts are the most important to downvote, to signal to uninformed readers that they should perhaps not trust the post overly much.
    consensus1 · 1790696919 · focus · HN ↗
    Downvotes signal going against the hive mind, not being incorrect, so they signal to me something that I should be sure to read.
    Larrikin · 1790697415 · focus · HN ↗
    Not every site is Reddit
    safety1st · 1790701908 · focus · HN ↗
    I think there was a lot of Reddit in the response to my comment. I made an earnest attempt to explain how I perceive the situation, and there are conspiracy theories along the lines of "don't listen to anyone who sounds too thoughtful, they're a Republican plant." I really do fear for our liberties when I see that line of thinking, it could come just as easily from Mao or Pol Pot with the same end result. As someone who didn't vote for Trump I'm always surprised at how much the Internet hates trying to understand the other side of the story. There were some insightful replies which might lead to me revising my understanding, and plenty of junk ones. I didn't really set out to start a partisan war but it unsurprisingly evolved into the usual type of one-sided one. I think you get a handful of better comments generally here than on Reddit but 80% of the discourse is pretty Reddit.
  5. kalleboo · 1790654417 · focus · HN ↗
    There is no partisan political strategy story to be read into the drawdown of the SPR. Biden ("the democrats") drew it down by an even larger amount right after the invasion of Ukraine to stabilize prices, and now before it recovered Trump is drawing it down even further to stabilize prices from his new war.
    [deleted] · 1790657411 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    Grombobulous · 1790658141 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course, the major difference is that Biden was responding to Russia invading Ukraine while Trump was responding to a conflict that he caused and started.
    kalleboo · 1790658698 · focus · HN ↗
    Certainly, just refuting GPs supposition that "Democrats want a big reserve so the US is dependent, Republicans want a small reserve because they want to be self-sufficient", since none of the numbers back it.
    expedition32 · 1790660725 · focus · HN ↗
    The US is a capitalist country oil companies will sell the oil to whomever pays the most. Tankers go vroom.
    Although remarkably there's been a lot of commie talk about nationalising the energy sector and not from the usual suspects...
    IAmBroom · 1790685991 · focus · HN ↗
    Anyone who uses "commie" unironically in the 2020s is not capable of productive discourse.
  6. getlawgdon · 1790654421 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not really supported by energy data. Under Biden/Harris, US crude production hit multiple consecutive all time highs and made the country a net exporter since 2020. In my world, that's the opposite of "minimizing domestic drilling." And producing oil doesn't prevent foreign wars; oil is a global commodity, energy markets are subject to global pricing events and disruptions anywhere drive up fuel prices in the US. Prices at the pump here don't care where crude was pumped. And the strange connection you draw between energy policy/oil reserves and offshore factory conditions conflates drastically different economic drivers. There is a real moral conversation to be had here about supply chain ethics but it doesn't get connected this way. This is a really shallow, cliche framing about [drilling vs importing] rather than [fossil fuel dominance vs clean energy transition], and drawing a preference to a party based on a faulty view of those is, disappointingly, Peak Political Affiliation 2026.
    Let's also not pretend that the current Republican administration's insane military campaign to disrupt oil supply and markets, isn't helpful to, I don't know, say, Kremlin's oil and gas export revenues, and say, how higher global benchmark crude helps to, say, finance a domestic war economy while buffering against sanctions. Just a tiny thought to consider when holding a preference for Republican oil strategy.
    consensus1 · 1790659591 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not telling the full story. Biden tried to block new oil and gas leases, but he was blocked from doing so by the courts. Oil production was up not because of, but rather in spite of the Biden administration.
    <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-environment-and-nature-business-9751c4909a8b1baba28f3bcff9d5fa6e" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-climate-change-environm...
  7. tharmas · 1790654480 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't US domestic oil exported to EU and others because its medium to light crude which US refineries are not calibrated for? Its my understanding US refineries are calibrated to refine Heavy crude which comes mainly from Canada and some from Venezuela.
    jandrewrogers · 1790657486 · focus · HN ↗
    US refineries are highly configurable and can refine any crude. They make more money refining difficult crude because they have the capability to handle it and many refineries do not, so naturally they prefer it for profitability reasons. The difference is extra refining steps that can be bypassed if they are not needed. Processing light sweet crude means some of their capital assets are sitting idle because they aren’t needed.
    The US also exports its own crude for blending with other crude at foreign refineries. A refinery may not be able to process some types of crude but can process that crude if blended with a different type of crude to change its average properties. The limit to this for refineries is the cost of buying and shipping enough suitable blending crude to the refinery.
  8. conception · 1790654517 · focus · HN ↗
    If the Republicans actually had that position instead of being funded heavily by oil money they would be #1 Super Top Solar/Green energy party because that is the path to energy independence and to truly reduce the influence of OPEC - even outside of the fact that peak oil is over and it will continue to get more and more expensive to pull oil out of the earth. But they’re not because your assumptions are misplaced.
    bathtub365 · 1790657424 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  9. margalabargala · 1790654550 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think your interpretation of Democrat policies is correct. I've seen nothing regarding a desire to import oil rather than produce it domestically, something that is fundamentally different from declining to expand domestic production (we are already a net exporter after all).
    The democrat position is more of, move off of oil to electrification, such that despite no expansion we never have to import, while simultaneously reducing that domestic impact.
  10. pstuart · 1790654905 · focus · HN ↗
    So the Green New Deal was about enabling foreign oil producers?
  11. mlyle · 1790655360 · focus · HN ↗
    About 40-45% of US petroleum use is burning it in passenger cars.
    We're already a net exporter of oil; if we pushed a bigger fraction of cars and other transport uses to electrification we'd be a massive net exporter.
    That wouldn't completely insulate us from global energy markets but it'd do a lot.
  12. saturn8601 · 1790655776 · focus · HN ↗
    >The counterpoint is that the US is producing more crude domestically than ever with more efficient drilling technology:
    From my understanding they are running refineries at max utilization and not able to do required maintenance due to this crisis. This is what worries me about the October surprise. A couple of well timed "screw ups" caused by lack of maintenance when the whole system is already at its breaking point can spell trouble.
  13. [deleted] · 1790656247 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  14. [deleted] · 1790660036 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  15. IAmBroom · 1790696491 · focus · HN ↗
    > The counterpoint is that the US is producing more crude domestically than ever with more efficient drilling technology:
    Your link doesn't back up your claim that it's more efficient. And believing that fracking is "more efficient" than simply drilling into a pressurized gusher pocket is a boggling conclusion.
6. tehjoker · 1790654825 · focus · HN ↗
  I heard John Mearshimer say on a podcast that ~230k barrels, you can't go lower without damaging the caverns the oil is stored in, so we're pretty close to it being over.
  1. tmellon2 · 1790656462 · focus · HN ↗
    We can simply get rid of most oil - Just ONE square mile of batteries and a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar can power the entire USA 24/7.
    It is because of world wide adoption of EVs that the fossil fuel demand has reduced and stabilized gas prices in the US.
    See : <a href="https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo" rel="nofollow">https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-have-unlo...
    clipsy · 1790658613 · focus · HN ↗
    > a TOTAL of 100 x 100 square miles of Solar
    But first we’d need to develop four dimensional solar panels
    cosmicgadget · 1790706408 · focus · HN ↗
    Math checks out. On the plus side, my panels exist in x, y, z, and time.
    readthenotes1 · 1790661199 · focus · HN ↗
    So cover 6% of California in solar panels?
    Or nearly all of Maryland?
    mapmap · 1790663986 · focus · HN ↗
    Panels on every roof and batteries in every garage.
    leonidasrup · 1790664836 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    eesmith · 1790672544 · focus · HN ↗
    It's only about 1/6th the area of US lawns.
    More directly, the US uses over 30 million acres to grow corn for biofuels. That's over 40,000 square miles, if I did my math right.
    As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_ethanol points out, "Growing corn to fuel internal combustion vehicles is a highly inefficient use of land. A solar farm generating electricity to power an electric vehicle would power around 85 times as much distance as corn ethanol grown on the same area."
    wallst07 · 1790673794 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, solar is far more efficient for generating power, but solar panels can't feed a population in a crisis.
    The ethanol market isn't just about fuel, it acts as an economic buffer that keeps millions of acres of land fertile, farmed, and operational. If a global supply chain collapse hits, we can immediately redirect that acreage to feed livestock and people. If you cover that prime topsoil with solar panels, that agricultural capacity is gone. A nation that can feed itself has national security sacrificing our emergency food reserve for electricity is not a good idea.
    eesmith · 1790684526 · focus · HN ↗
    The other 30,000 square miles -- 3/4th of it -- is still available for farming. And it isn't like solar panels can only be placed on existing farmland. I've seen a lot of rooftop and backyard solar installed around where I live.
    If there is a global supply chain collapse, then the price of fossil fuels will likely go through the roof, placing a greater demand for substitutes like ethanol, which will raise the price of food and feed crops as farmers switch to produce the more profitable fuel crops. Or if the government orders the farmers to only produce corn for livestock and people, then there's no effective fuel substitute.
    What keeps the land fertile is not the corn monoculture of places like Iowa, but rather a massive amount of fertilizer. As we know from the US war with Iran, fertilizer availability is subject to a global supply chain collapse because the current production methods require a lot of fossil fuel for power.
    If you want to reduce your dependency on the global fertilizer supply chain, you'll need a lot of cheap local power to make things like anhydrous ammonia locally.
    The experience with agrivoltaics shows that solar power and agriculture can coexist profitably on the same land. At the very least it's not simply a one-or-the-other option, or as you characterized it, "is gone".
    If you really want to keeps millions of acres land fertile to handle a possible future economic crisis, you should want severe limits on building new urban and low-density residential development on farmland. If you turn farmland into a suburb, that farmland is far more "gone", for agricultural purposes, than setting up solar panels.
    The paper at <a href="https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/land-12-00574-with-cover.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/... estimates well over 10 million acres of agricultural land lost that way by 2040, which at 15,000+ square miles is far more than the quoted 10,000 square miles needed to get rid of most oil use.
    So it seems to me that for your goal of making the US less affected by a global supply chain collapse, you should want to have a lot more PV farms.
  2. pas · 1790675441 · focus · HN ↗
    every time oil is removed the walls are damaged (because they pump in water to force out the oil, which dissolves more of the walls)
    <a href="https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-strategic-petroleum-reserve" rel="nofollow">https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-the-strategic-pet...

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