The U.S. is tapping in to its national stocks of crude with abandon. The withdrawals are taking a toll on the strategic reserve system.
Just in the past four years, the Biden and Trump administrations have ordered the largest releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while seeking to tamp down soaring oil prices—a total of 352 million barrels, or nearly half the capacity of the stocks.
Now, frequent drawdowns, wear-and-tear and a lack of investments are straining the reserve, according to experts. The 60 Gulf Coast salt caverns that make up the stocks can’t be drawn from or refilled at the rate at which they were designed, federal researchers found. Equipment failures have bedeviled the reserve’s managers. At one point, a well broke and caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude.
The upshot: President Trump or a future administration might not be able to rely on the massive oil buffer like others have in the past—even as the prolonged U.S.-Iran war all but ensures continued volatility in energy markets.
“It’s a strategically important national asset, and I think that its management and supervision needs to be elevated to reflect that,” said Clayton Seigle, a nonresident scholar in energy security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran in recent days have raised the specter of potential new constraints on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil transited before the current conflict.
U.S. strategic stockpiles could play a crucial role in the coming months as the conflict lingers. The current release of 172 million barrels, authorized by Trump in March, is expected to further stress the facilities. Stocks in the reserves have fallen to their lowest levels since 1983.
An Energy Department spokeswoman said the administration was managing the reserve responsibly and “helping stabilize oil markets, protect Americans from supply disruptions, and strengthen energy security at home and abroad.”
Analysts say the U.S.’s ability to weather oil disruptions doesn’t hinge on the caverns as much as it used to. The shale boom turned the U.S. into the world’s largest crude producer, and the country’s reliance on imports has plummeted. American drillers are on track this year to produce some 14 million barrels of oil a day, compared with about 5 million barrels in 2008.
Still, the Iran war has shown that the stockpiles remain a key lever administrations can pull to provide relief to global markets. The current release, coordinated with other member nations of the International Energy Agency, helped cap a rise in U.S. crude futures to $112.95 a barrel, even as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply was disrupted at one point. Prices now hover near $74.
But signs of distress are mounting. The stocks were established in 1975, and investments aren’t keeping up with the aging infrastructure, experts say. DOE officials recently told the Government Accountability Office that they are holding the reserve “together with ‘Band-Aids,’ and that it is uncertain how long they will hold,” according to a GAO report published last month.
One key issue: Successive administrations and Congress have pumped oil out of the reserve dozens of times through sales to raise funds, as well as emergency releases. But the stockpiles were initially designed for up to five full drawdowns, and the frequent releases are degrading the sites’ integrity, experts say.
The reserve has experienced 16 major equipment failures since 2013, including of raw water and brine disposal piping. Some sites have seen well deformation and hydraulic failures. In May 2024, a well ruptured unexpectedly at a Texas site, causing the loss of as much as 400,000 barrels, the GAO report said.
The deterioration limits how much crude can be pumped into and out of the caverns. As of December, the DOE estimated 2.7 million barrels a day could be drawn out of the 4.4 million barrels it was designed to handle, according to GAO. About 440,000 barrels a day can be injected, out of the 785,000 barrels the initial design provided for. That means not all of the oil in the reserve might be accessible when needed, and replenishing the stocks is a slower process than it should be, experts said.
The DOE has completed some major maintenance through a $1.4 billion project, but the effort has been plagued by delays and cost overruns.
A DOE official said it was unlikely that the administration would need to release all the authorized barrels. He said it has been releasing crude at a lower rate than during Biden’s withdrawal to try to preserve the sites’ lifespan.
Steven Sobolik, a retired member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, the geotechnical adviser for the SPR, said the facilities are still in a good operational status. But they are “in need of significant planning and rehabilitation to continue in that manner for more than just a few years,” he said.
As of December, the DOE estimated that the SPR’s current major maintenance backlog would cost about $230 million to address, though this didn’t reflect the full scope of the reserve’s needs, GAO said. The DOE spokeswoman noted the GOP-led Congress has allocated $218 million for maintenance and repairs to the SPR.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said persuading Congress to allocate more funds to refill the SPR is an uphill battle. The DOE structured the latest release as an exchange so that the 172 million barrels would be returned to the SPR along with an additional 35 million barrels at no cost to the taxpayer, the spokeswoman said.
“Hopefully the Iran war and the disruption it caused will serve as a wake-up call to reverse…the trend of neglect, both in terms of operational capabilities, but also just the volume,” said Robert McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group.
Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com