President Donald Trump relentlessly attacked former President Joe Biden for having “virtually drained” the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) ahead of the 2022 midterms, but on Tuesday, CNN’s Matt Egan noted that “this week,” the SPR is poised to reach its lowest levels in well over four decades.
“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve down by another eight million barrels last week, total of 66 million barrels have been released from the SPR since the [Iran] war started, and you might recall that four years ago, then-candidate Trump, he really blasted President Biden for aggressively draining the SPR ahead of those midterm elections in 2022,” said CNN’s Matt Egan.
“Of course, that was because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Fast forward four years later, now Trump officials are draining the SPR at an even faster pace ahead of these midterms because of another war!”
The SPR was established in the mid-1970s in the wake of the 1973 energy crisis, sparked by the United States’ backing of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. At its height, the SPR held around 726 million barrels in 2010, just a few hundred thousand below its maximum capacity of 727 million.
Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration released around 180 million barrels from the SPR to address rising energy costs. The SPR’s stockpile began increasing again in late 2023 until Trump launched his deeply unpopular war against Iran, soon after which his administration began draining its reserves at an accelerated pace.
“The SPR is now down to the lowest level since July of 2023, and at some point this week at the current pace, the SPR is likely to drop below those Biden-era levels, leaving the SPR with the least amount of oil since the early 1980s back when it was just starting to get built,” Egan said.
