U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve Falls to 1983 Low as Iran War Drawdown Raises Infrastructure Risks

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has lost nearly one-quarter of its crude in 17 weeks as Washington releases emergency supplies to offset Iran war disruptions, pushing gasoline prices higher and prompting warnings about the reserve’s aging underground caverns.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

America’s emergency oil stockpile has fallen to its lowest level in more than four decades as the Trump administration draws down millions of barrels to counter supply disruptions from the war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 311.4 million barrels on July 17, down from 415.4 million on March 20, a decline of 104 million barrels, or nearly 25%, in 17 weeks, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

The reserve has not contained so little crude since March 1983. The only time its inventory was lower occurred during the stockpile’s initial development after it was established in 1977.

The rapid depletion comes as oil trades above $100 per barrel and attacks on commercial vessels place additional pressure on already restricted energy supplies. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have begun striking ships in the Red Sea, creating another threat to international oil traffic as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, Reuters reported.

Analysts have also warned that the amount of oil that can be practically withdrawn from the reserve may be smaller than the government’s headline inventory figure suggests. Questions about the condition of the storage system, the speed at which crude can be released and the minimum volume needed to protect its salt caverns have become more urgent as stocks decline, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation report and a separate analysis of the reserve.

“The current drawdown is a direct result of the Iran war. At 311.4 million barrels, the lowest level since 1983, the SPR cannot sustain repeated drawdown cycles without approaching dangerously low levels,” Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The U.S. release was an emergency response to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Since the U.S. started a war of choice with Iran, the U.S. caused its own emergency which required releases from the SPR.”

The current decline follows the largest sustained drawdown in the reserve’s history under former President Joe Biden. Biden authorized the release of 180 million barrels on March 31, 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine and separately approved the sale of another 20 million barrels, bringing the total to 200 million.

The Government Accountability Office said the Biden-era withdrawals set a record. The Department of Energy later purchased replacement crude, but the reserve remained far below earlier levels.

The Trump administration added approximately 20 million barrels during 2025, lifting stocks to about 413 million barrels at the beginning of 2026, according to additional EIA inventory figures. Those gains have now been erased by releases tied to the Iran conflict.

President Donald Trump announced March 11 that the Department of Energy would release 172 million barrels as part of a coordinated 400 million-barrel drawdown by member countries of the International Energy Agency. The international action was intended to reduce fuel costs and replace supplies disrupted by the war.

Energy Under Secretary Kyle Haustveit said the barrels are scheduled to be returned in early 2027.

The White House rejected allegations that the administration had handled the reserve irresponsibly and said the current arrangement would eventually return lower-cost oil to federal storage.

“The SPR is a critical national security asset that President Trump tapped into to help stabilize the oil markets and mitigate short-term supply disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the DCNF. “While the Biden administration irresponsibly drained the SPR for political gain, the Trump administration exchanged the barrels for lower-cost barrels that will be delivered back to the SPR. Domestic oil and gas production levels have hit record highs thanks to President Trump’s energy dominance agenda.”

Energy public policy analyst David Blackmon said the Trump administration’s net drawdown during the Iran war remained smaller than the Biden administration’s earlier withdrawals.

“[Currently] the Iran war has resulted in a net reduction of a little more than 100 million barrels by the Trump administration,” Blackmon told the DCNF. “That compares with the more than 250 million drawn out of the reserve by Biden in 2022-23.”

Consumers are already paying substantially more at the pump. AAA reported a national average of $2.98 per gallon on Feb. 26. By July 22, the current national average had climbed to $4.06, an increase of $1.08, or approximately 36%.

The reserve was created to provide the country with emergency crude during wars, embargoes and severe interruptions to normal supply. Hanke warned that repeated reliance on those inventories leaves the nation with a diminishing buffer if the Middle East conflict continues longer than anticipated.

“With regard to the massive use and drawdown of the SPR, the U.S. is basically making a bet that the conflict in the Middle East will be resolved before the SPR is fully depleted. If not, the U.S. would be left without a safety net,” Hanke said.

“America relies on the flow of crude produced from wells and the flow from inventory drawdowns,” he added. “If the SPR is depleted, a huge inventory flow is cut off, and so is America’s precautionary margin of safety.”

The concern is not limited to the number of barrels remaining. The reserve’s four storage sites use underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast, and the process used to remove crude gradually changes the caverns themselves.

Fresh water is injected into the underground formations, forcing oil toward the surface. Because water dissolves salt, every withdrawal can enlarge or alter the cavern and place stress on wells, casings and other infrastructure.

“We inject fresh water into the cavern to displace the oil, and when you inject fresh water into the salt cavern, it dissolves the interior of the cavern,” Haustveit said. “So we don’t want fresh water contacting that point where the casing [of the SPR] intersects, so we’re a long ways from that number, and we have no plans to go anywhere near that number.”

Haustveit said the Department of Energy closely monitors inventory levels and has no intention of draining the caverns to a point where fresh water would reach vulnerable portions of the casing.

Hanke nevertheless said the cumulative effects of repeated withdrawals and refills have already harmed the system.

“Repeated large drawdown-and-refill cycles beyond what the SPR was engineered for have already caused documented damage to the SPR,” he said. “We don’t have a precise number for the SPR inventory ‘floor,’ but draining the SPR too aggressively or too often risks structural degradation that can permanently damage the SPR.”

The GAO has documented broader problems with the reserve’s aging facilities and the absence of a comprehensive federal plan for future investment.

“The reserve’s aging infrastructure also needs further updates to ensure it remains capable of receiving and releasing oil as designed,” the GAO said. “However, Congress hasn’t specified its priorities or identified a target size for the reserve, and DOE doesn’t have a long-term plan to inform operational and investment decisions.”

Full Drawdown Capability Has Never Been Tested

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed to withstand a near-total emergency withdrawal, but the federal government has never attempted one.

“The SPR was designed for full drawdowns in the event of severe energy supply disruptions, but even the largest drawdowns to date haven’t tested this capability,” a GAO spokesperson told the DCNF. “This would mean releasing as much crude oil as technically feasible (more than 4 million barrels per day) for up to 90 days until fully drawn down (up to 90 percent of site inventory, per the SPR’s technical and performance criteria). Additionally, the effective drawdown rate declines as the oil inventory declines.”

Although the design criteria contemplate releasing as much as 90% of stored oil, the amount that can be removed each day falls as cavern pressure and inventory decrease. That means the remaining barrels become progressively more difficult to deliver during the later stages of a major drawdown.

Federal technical advisers have identified additional weaknesses that could limit access to crude even before the reserve approaches empty.

“Sandia National Laboratories, the geotechnical advisor for the SPR, found in 2024 that well deformations are outpacing DOE’s ability to adequately reduce the risk of potential well failures with corrective actions at current resource levels,” a GAO spokesperson said.

“DOE is concerned about the integrity of the SPR’s wells due to a combination of aging, breaking, and single-entry wells that may limit access to the SPR’s crude oil at some sites,” the spokesperson added.

Blackmon said the government may soon have to weigh the immediate value of releasing more oil against the possibility of permanently damaging the storage network.

“The U.S. SPR is reaching critically low levels now that threaten the operational integrity and infrastructure of its underground caverns and transmission lines,” Blackmon previously said. “The DOE will have to make some hard choices about whether it can safely continue these large withdrawals in the near future.”

He said a complete withdrawal would carry severe consequences for both the reserve and energy markets.

“It is doubtful that Secretary Wright would even contemplate a full drawdown of the SPR,” Blackmon said. “Such an action would almost certainly destroy the structural integrity of the system. It would also without question result in a major blowout in both crude oil prices and gasoline prices at the pump.”

Global demand could place additional strain on the market. China sharply reduced its oil purchases after the Iran war began, with June imports falling to approximately 40% of prewar levels, according to Reuters.

That reduction has temporarily removed a substantial source of demand. A return to China’s previous import levels could intensify competition for limited supplies and push prices higher.

“If China were to start importing oil at the same pace it did prior to this situation, I think that would be extremely problematic,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told the DCNF. “But aside from that, you know, China is not exactly transparen in its numbers and its data and its needs, so it’s really hard to know what China’s needs are.”

The war between Russia and Ukraine is creating another threat to global fuel availability. Russia remains a major crude and refined-product exporter, while Ukrainian forces have increasingly attacked its refineries.

“Ukraine attacking major Russian oil refineries is becoming more problematic and almost equally as problematic as the entire U.S. situation with Iran, with the Strait remaining closed,” De Haan said. “It’s becoming more of a challenge with global refining capacity diminished because of those Ukrainian attacks. That’s just about [an] equal part of the story in my mind in the last four weeks has been how those refining attacks have diminished Russia’s ability to export diesel and gasoline to a global market that is battling [the] needing of it, so I would mention that as a wild card here.”

The falling inventory has also revived debate over whether the United States should continue relying on a government-managed emergency reserve or treat domestic shale deposits as its primary long-term energy safeguard.

“We have outgrown the SPR. America’s real strategic reserve is the vast oil and natural gas resources stored in U.S. shale formations,” said Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. “The best response to volatile global energy markets is to remove government interventions and allow the private sector to respond quickly with more supply. That means permitting more exploration, production, transportation, and refining in the US.”

The reserve’s historically low level leaves policymakers confronting several uncertainties at once: how much crude can safely be removed, how quickly promised replacement barrels can be returned, whether the Iran war will end before stocks fall significantly further and how the aging caverns will respond to another large withdrawal cycle.

“We’ve never seen the SPR at such low levels, so you know obviously there’s a lot of uncertainty over exactly, you know, the infrastructure questions,” De Haan said. “You know, you mentioned could there be damage? We’ve never run through this process before, so it’s always hard to put some of these details together on these unique situations.”