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. 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.

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