NEW YORK, Aug. 13 — The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has dropped to as low as 298.7 million barrels as of the week ending Aug. 7, hitting the lowest level since January 1983, according to data issued by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.
Reserves saw week-on-week declines for 20 consecutive weeks since the end of March, and the aggregate release of crude oil reserves totaled 116.7 million barrels during the period, according to the agency’s latest Weekly Petroleum Status Report.
Reserves are expected to drop further to 243.4 million barrels if the U.S. Department of Energy fully implements its plan to release additional barrels.
U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the Department of Energy to release 172 million barrels from the stockpiles within roughly 120 days, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced in March.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was established in December 1975 following the Arab oil embargo, has a capacity of 727 million barrels. Statistics show that the United States kept over 726 million barrels of reserves from December 2009 to July 2011.
Still, the emergency petroleum stockpiles shrank materially in recent years following supply disruptions triggered by the Ukraine conflict in 2022. (Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
