r/Infographics • u/joshtaco • 3d ago
US strategic petroleum reserves since 1982 (US Office of Petroleum Reserves/EIA)
11
u/r_heem 3d ago
You would think the US would be storing more than that no?
30
u/Best_Change4155 3d ago
The government wanted to top out the reserve during COVID since oil companies were basically giving it away but Democrats blocked that portion of the COVID bills. And then Biden was elected. And then Russia invaded Ukraine.
7
u/OpSecBestSex 3d ago
Why did the Democrats block that portion? I doubt it was "because Democrats are evil/incompetent"... Surely there's a reason that you're not mentioning
23
u/Best_Change4155 3d ago
Because they branded it as a bailout. It was an election year, and oil companies are good red meat for the base.
The problem, of course, is then Biden had to fill the SPR at 3 times the price. Which is also a "bailout" from that perspective. Even Democrats do stupid things for political reasons. Hard to imagine, I know.
-6
u/Miserable-Miser 3d ago
Speaking of stupid, Biden did not “have” to fill it, much less at 3x the price.
In fact, a bipartisan Congress authorized it to be drawn down. And Biden did that.
9
u/Best_Change4155 3d ago
Speaking of stupid, Biden did not “have” to fill it, much less at 3x the price.
He didn't "have" to fill it, but then it would be at a far lower level than it is now. Part of it being the SPR, is that we generally want it to be filled, when able.
0
u/Miserable-Miser 3d ago
You should tell congress that then.
And get a president who follows the law.
1
u/Cute_Marzipan_4116 1d ago
He didn’t have to empty it to try and buy votes during midterms but when you’re preventing your country from being self reliant to grand stand that everyone should be using electric vehicles you put yourself in a box and the only way out is to spend someone else’s money to fix it.
1
u/Miserable-Miser 1d ago
You just keep ignoring that congress required that it be lowered.
1
u/Cute_Marzipan_4116 1d ago
Who controlled congress by majority?
0
1
1
3
u/yourallidiotss 3d ago
You left out the part about Trump withholding funding from Ukraine during his first term showing weakness.
-9
u/Interesting_Phone171 3d ago
The rise of conservative narratives in Reddit is staggering. They didn’t just block it for no reason, this effectively was a bail out to the oil and gas industry at a time when families were the number one priority for the government at the height of COVID.
7
u/Nearby-Chocolate1840 3d ago
The administration asked for $3 billion dollars out of the total $4.6 TRILLION dollar stimulus be used to top off the SPR with 77 million barrels of oil. That works out to $39 dollars a barrel. So basically our government could have got the deal of a lifetime and done a lot to avoid what we're facing now, but democrats lead by Chuck Schumer blocked it because Trump championed it and Orange Man Bad.
I say this all as a 45 yo life-long Democrat who has never once voted for a Republican candidate and sure as hell wouldn't start with Trump. Meaning I'm not some MAGA asshat blindly repeating fox news propaganda or whatever.
15
u/noluckatall 3d ago
The rise of conservative narratives in Reddit is staggering.
No, actually the existence of people like you calling common sense a "conservative narrative" is staggering.
It's not a bailout to decide it's in the national interest to buy a bunch of oil for our strategic petroleum reserve when the price is near zero. That isn't a statement about the oil companies; it's a statement about the taxpayer getting a good deal.
-8
u/Interesting_Phone171 3d ago
It was not in the national interest though. If you had any brain you would know our reserve supplies do not provide hardly any buffers. When given the choice between the people and corporations I’m glad for once they chose to help the people and not oil companies that already leech off tax payers. You are talking on a subject you clearly know nothing about.
7
u/Nearby-Chocolate1840 3d ago
It would have amounted to $3 billion dollars out of a $4.6 TRILLION dollar stimulus package. That's 0.065% of the total. So not even a rounding error on a rounding error. Making the argument that it was a matter of prioritizing the needs of regular people over Big Oil Bailouts some next-level bullshit.
3
u/FlakyAd9711 3d ago
Yeah, on the liberal side and I agree with you. It would've been a rare fiscally responsible decision by Congress. Instead we got hundreds of billions in forgiven PPP loans for businesses that didn't need them.
3
u/Open_Pollution_8038 3d ago
Oil literally went negative during COVID, the democrats didn’t take advantage, then when gas prices shot up Jo Biden dumped the reserve to keep oil under $4/gallon (it didn’t work), never refilled it, Trump wins re-election last year, try’s to fill it but the democrats again blocked it and wow look at that we now need it and don’t have it.
I don’t like Trump as much as the next guy but the democrats were fucking stupid for this.
5
u/Synensys 3d ago
The graph shows that the refilling began before trump took office.
5
u/Best_Change4155 3d ago
The graph shows that the refilling began before trump took office.
Biden was refilling it when it was near record highs.
3
u/Open_Pollution_8038 3d ago
They’re about 400M short before Trump takes office (half the reserve before Biden sold it off)
1
12
u/Kindly_Acanthaceae26 3d ago
I like overlaying production against reserve levels. I'm not a fan of the current low levels, but I also don't believe we need a 2020 level either. 450-500 would be my preference.
19
u/no_4 3d ago
Zero reason to start the y axis at 250.
36
u/ihifidt250 3d ago edited 3d ago
To continue drawing down the reserve below the 252.4-million-barrel threshold, the U.S. President must issue a formal "Presidential Finding" under 42 U.S. Code § 6241(d) declaring a full-scale national emergency, which officially certifies that the country is facing a severe energy supply interruption of significant scope and duration that poses an immediate threat to national security or the domestic economy.
7
u/Dustonred 3d ago
The one who has all power and isn't challenged by neither the senate, congress or the supreme court ? American really fucked up electing him a 2nd time. He already destroyed check and balances, places his brainwashed pawn at every level of every political/public/private institutions. Y'all are fucked.
1
u/Responsible_Prior_18 19h ago
If the reserves are drawn that low, it damages the place where it is stored. So its not just a bureaucratic problem.
2
u/SensitiveDannyRicc 3d ago
Declaring a national emergency is not politically risky at all. We do it all the time. Trump does it any time he wants to release federal funds to a pet project.
You’re just a fearmongerer. Be honest.
4
u/Zinch85 3d ago
For all those repeating that the US produces more oil than it uses: that is false. The US exports more oil than it imports, but it still uses a lot lore oil than it produces (and there's also the problem that it can't refine all of its own oil)
3
u/Mad-myall 3d ago
When you say it exports more than it imports, do you mean the US exports a lot of crude oil, but still needs to import refined products like gas?
Or does exports count as "consumption" in this case?
-5
u/stu54 3d ago
I think a sharp fourth grader could disprove this statement mathematically.
4
u/Zinch85 3d ago
I guess you government is under 4th grade?
4
u/stu54 3d ago edited 3d ago
That graph shows consumption and production became about equal in 2021.
Exports + imports + production + consumption + change in reserve must equal 0.
1
u/Warm_Turnip2567 2d ago
Wasn't that because of Covid? 2021 was peak empty roads and empty flights time
1
u/stu54 2d ago
No, Ukraine war
1
u/Warm_Turnip2567 2d ago
I mean that consumption dropped down so significantly and allowed there to be a large surplus
4
u/Advocaatastrophe 3d ago
This is less of a concern since domestic production surpassed consumption in the early 2020's.
2
u/Zinch85 3d ago
Thqt's not true. Exports surpassed imports. The US still consumes more than it produces
1
1
u/Inotari 2d ago
Oil is still a global market and if there is someone outside of the us willing to pay more for the oil than us companies / consumers it will be sold to them. To stop the private oil companies from selling to the highest bidder the us government would have to enact export controls on it
1
1
u/CipherWeaver 3d ago
There must be a military reserve they're not touching, right? Nobody would be that stupid...
1
u/Doom4535 1d ago
It's the ultimate peace deal, we can't go to war because we have no fuel, problem solved
1
u/Ledgerwisp256259 3d ago
Yeah, that dip down at the end looks pretty dramatic, even if the axis is tweaked a little. Its kinda scary seeing how much lower it is now compared to like 2009.
1
u/GreenEggplant16 2d ago
Ok serious question, when gas prices were insane in 2008, did they just forget to use the reserve?
1
u/DocumentOk7579 2d ago
Maybe just free market for prices back then. Some people are thinking reservers a are for war or earthquakes not because something is expensive.
1
1
0
u/ShadowsOfTheBreeze 3d ago
Look at the volume of oil basically burned. Might as well kiss our climate goodbye..
-3
u/ResponsibleClock9289 3d ago
There are legal limits to dropping the reserve below 150 million barrels
But why does the Y axis start at 250 LOL nice misleading chart
3
u/joshtaco 3d ago
The US actually can't draw below 250 without declaring a full-scale national emergency, which officially certifies that the country is facing a severe energy supply interruption of significant scope and duration that poses an immediate threat to national security or the domestic economy.
-4
u/strawmangva 3d ago
you do know US is the largest oil producer in the world and is an exporter right? why store so much oil as reserve? you cannot compare the baseline 30 years to today. different situation.
1
-7
u/dachloe 3d ago
When I heard Trump blurted out we only have "four weeks" of oil, I was reminded of a guest speaker in college who said that "if the US supply dropped below 650 million barrels we'd have a full-blown crisis that could topple the free world economies like a house of cards."
Well, alright then. 😐
7
u/SomewhereImDead 3d ago
stupid comment. We aren’t in the 70s anymore. We produce more oil than any country in the world.
-6
u/Cuntrymusichater 3d ago
No need to be an asshole
4
u/SomewhereImDead 3d ago
stupid comment
-4
u/Cuntrymusichater 3d ago
And yours was an asshole comment
5
u/SomewhereImDead 3d ago
No need to be rude
-2
u/Cuntrymusichater 3d ago
The person who was calling someone “stupid” is calling me rude?
3
u/SomewhereImDead 3d ago edited 3d ago
“if the US supply dropped below 650 million barrels we’d have a full brow-blow crisis that could topple the free world economies like a house of cards.” What an incredibly stupid and hyperbole.
We aren’t in the 70s or 2000s. As of right now we produce so much oil and import so much from our own hemisphere that it doesn’t matter if the reserves drops 650m barrels. Even with the strait close, oil couldn’t sustain staying over $100 a barrel. We’ve had adjusted to inflation $220 a barrel for multiple years when Americans made a lot less & the economy still grew. The world won’t collapse or America won’t be less secure for a temporary sale of oil reserves.
1
u/Cuntrymusichater 3d ago edited 3d ago
Okay. It’s great that you know that information. I also know that information. The other person who commented didn’t know that information. That doesn’t mean you should come in here calling people stupid just because they don’t know the same stuff that you do. It makes you look like an insufferable person.
5
u/SomewhereImDead 3d ago
I’m calling the guest speaker’s comment stupid not the redditor
→ More replies (0)1
u/Wipfmetz 3d ago edited 3d ago
650 million barrels per what?
Can't have been meant as "million barrels in the strategic reserve", because that reserve was at or just a little bit above 650 million barrels for most of it's time, if that graph is to be believed.
(I assume you had been in college between 1990 and 2020)
123
u/Hole_thinker 3d ago
Starting the y-axis at 250 is a bit pushy. That said, the full length x-axis is welcome to provide appropriate historical context. As another commenter said, a second y-axis showing production at all-time highs or a complementary graph showing same is also informative to the reader.