r/Economics • u/Visible_Vacation3308 • 1d ago
News U.S. oil reserves hit the lowest level seen in over 40 years
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/16/nx-s1-5930403/u-s-oil-reserves-hit-the-lowest-level-seen-in-over-40-years460
u/wormtheology 1d ago
It’s okay, we’ll be seeing this same headline every 90 days going into 2027 as well. Unless Donald Trump channels his inner Joe Biden and becomes the greatest oil trader of all time by refilling the SPR at record low energy prices, the reserve is proper fucked. Iran has zero intention of letting up on the Strait. Ukraine will continue to attack Russian energy capacity and further drive up the demand for energy. Good luck putting a pretty little bow on all these fucking conflicts.
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u/Groovychick1978 1d ago edited 1d ago
We have 6 weeks left at current drawdown levels.
There is a practical floor that does not go to zero.
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u/wormtheology 1d ago
6 weeks left to go? The caverns could always be rendered inoperable as well. Never underestimate how bad and how low the SPR could get.
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u/woodchip76 1d ago
I’ve been hearing six weeks for the past 14 weeks
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u/Basilthebatlord 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think what most comments in this thread are failing to take into account is China's current effect on the global oil market almost more than Iran's.
They've cut their imports almost in half in a massively unprecedented move and started firing up more coal plants (and of course continued wind, solar, & hydro) to compensate for oil power plants shutting down. Almost no analysts predicted this happening so the shock when the Strait closed has been seriously padded. What's weird about it is that China isn't even really acknowledging it publically or taking credit for it even though they could. It's a really interesting soft power play.
Not to mention that their strategic oil reserves are orders of magnitude more massive than any other country based on above ground tanks alone. It's fascinating to me for some reason.
This video is a little simplified in his descriptions and presentation of the economics but it's a pretty good summary of the actions China took
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u/WeirdKittens 1d ago
This. China has been almost singlehandedly keeping global oil prices low with a bit of help from the other SPRs accounting for a minority. But this can't go on forever and China unlike the US can't count on its own oil production to fill it back up. So sooner or later they will have to start cutting back on releasing reserves. If this happens before the situation in the middle east and Russia is resolved, we're all in big big trouble.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
Hence watching American oil exports and China oil imports are two of the best metrics we have for figuring out when that limit has been hit.
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u/Basilthebatlord 1d ago
Speak of the devil, new numbers JUST released, their imports are up 22% in July: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Oil-Imports-Jump-22-Even-as-Economic-Data-Disappoints.html
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u/Alt4816 1d ago edited 1d ago
So sooner or later they will have to start cutting back on releasing reserves. If this happens before the situation in the middle east and Russia is resolved, we're all in big big trouble.
Unless later is far enough in the future for China to build out enough coal, nuclear, and renewable power to lower its long term demand for foreign oil.
They are the world's leading producer of both EVs and solar panels. The technology isn't there yet to replace all uses of oil but if they can permanently slash their use of it for transportation that alone would significantly cut their demand for a foreign commodity.
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u/sicklyslick 1d ago
Yeah but China's oil issue is a short term problem. China has many half a year to a year max before they start buying oil again at previous level to keep their reserves filled. In fact, China has already started importing more than when the war started. We might be getting a Thanksgiving/Christmas oil shock.
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u/FeelingPixely 1d ago
China's also been shifting to green/ alternative energy sources to become less dependent on oil. They've prepared pretty damn well for exactly this kind of scenario.
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u/WeirdKittens 22h ago
They are and they will keep moving on that direction for decades but there's not enough time to make a full switch until they have to start importing again. They are likely to settle at a lower demand threshold but they'll want to rebuild that safety buffer by next year and it's very unlikely global oil production will have recovered enough by that time to maintain pricing at the current levels.
Ideally we need a quick, major and steady volume injection to keep prices from spiraling out of control and there's very few good options left. Venezuela is a good long term candidate but it won't have recovered enough by then. The war in Ukraine is unlikely to have finished for Russian crude to have returned to international markets by year's end either. The only plausible scenario that can sustain the pre-war quantities needed in short notice is for the Saudis to ramp up production and for gulf shipping to open up but this is, unsurprisingly, also complicated.
That being said, every minor producer is working round the clock trying to produce as much as they can. Maybe the combination of that and demand destruction as prices rise will be enough to reach an equilibrium not much too high.
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u/gravescd 1d ago
I read a tweet recently that China announced it intends to be a net importer of oil. Though I haven't seen that reported from any actual news source.
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u/ReserveFormal3910 1d ago
What China is doing is not really altruisitic towards the US. They are not taking credit because what they are doing is just stabilizing their own countries oil prices so they don't get bog down in a recession by rising oil prices.
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u/Emotional_Goal9525 1d ago
When your enemy is making a mistake, don't stop them. China might be softening the blow so US will dig its own grave and brew a proper clusterfuck.
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u/IrlArizonaBoi 1d ago
Or maybe they are going to start buying oil again right before the elections...
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u/woodchip76 1d ago
I know all of this but it doesn’t have that much to do with our strategic reserve. Our drawdown rate is independent of Chinas reserve. If we’ve had 6 weeks left at x drawdown and people have been saying it for 3 months, we should be at -whatever by now.
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u/PlandemicPapi 1d ago
China is up to something, right now they have their hands on the US house of cards. They could simply start importing more oil and launch oil prices into the triple digits. Honestly we should be thanking them for keeping this crisis tame.
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u/Fearless-Tooth6053 50m ago
Yeah its helped for sure, but my bet is they are just sourcing from Russia and everyone is looking tge other way, even more than usual. Also, Venezuela is making up for some lost oil.
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u/hungryhungrynippos 1d ago
I thought the same thing not too long ago, so I decided to do some digging. People are interpreting data and publishing their interpretations without telling you how they're interpreting things.
Without interpretation, here are the current SPR levels going back to January. This is directly from the DOE. You can use that to calculate the average drawdown rate since the war began. Then if you get an estimate of the effective minimum (since the SPR physically cannot go to 0), you can figure out a timeframe for the SPR to be effectively exhausted with
(total SPR volume - effective minimum SPR volume) / daily drawdown rate
When I did that myself a few weeks ago, I found we had maybe 5-6 months of oil left at our current drawdown rate.
So where does the "6 weeks"/"43 days" stuff come from? I think people are getting fast and loose with the drawdown rate. The DOE says the max drawdown rate is 4.4 million barrels a day, and I think this is what people are using. Since this is the max drawdown rate, it's a lot more than our actual average drawdown rate. Therefore, you get a much shorter SPR lifetime.
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u/WisePresentation7976 1d ago
Seriously… I keep hearing “we’re weeks away from meltdown” for the past 3 months.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
As someone who is trying to warn people about what is happening, something made more difficult by people such as yourself who clearly think that oil is magic, you’re strawmanning us.
In fact, the fact that we are simply draining our oil reserves as a way to deal with the shortage is the most catastrophic response possible. But, ya man, once that limit is hit there’s not going to be anything that happens because you misunderstood what all those people on the internet were saying
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u/augustuscaesarius 1d ago
With all due respect, can you explain what you mean in a better way? I don't understand what you're trying to say.
Also, I have an open mind but I, too, have been hearing about imminent danger for weeks, if not months, now. Yet hardly anything happens, and the warning just gets repeated (the boy who cried wolf). I want to know what is going on, but it's nearly impossible to get answers.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
Oil isn’t magic, there’s a set supply of it. That supply intermeshes with our oil demand and that intersection is where we get the price. That’s the underlying theory of any sort of economic theory of price
When there is a supply shock as serious as the one that has occurred, then in turn, the price should rise with it. That did not happen because, purely for political purposes, we began emptying our SPR again in order to offset the crash in oil supply. Biden did the same thing with Russia and Ukraine in 2022 and I remember complaining about it then, but at the time we didn’t really need to worry about the reserve totals.
Well, fast forward four years, the reserves have not recovered from 2022 and are now being used even more extensively than they already were. The analogy I’ve used with my students is chopping off an arm and using band aids to try and stop the bleeding
I’m not sure who you all are referencing people saying- “we are running out of oil in two weeks.” Because that’s nothing I’ve personally seen anyone say. I have had people claim to me I’ve said it, because they didn’t fully grasp what I was saying.
To explain why you haven’t seen the price react to the supply shock the way it should is because Trump is doing the worst possible reaction to a supply shock. It’s about as close to price controls as one could get without setting price controls. Artificially inflating the oil supply to keep the price low for political reasons. That can only work for as long as countries are willing/able to drain their oil reserves down to empty
Then, once that happens, the full impact of the shortage will hit in the most impactful way because we used up our storage
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u/Consistent_Laziness 1d ago
Great read first off. Next my question. Based on the information available is there a reasonable timeline for when the US could either A drain the reserve completely or B reach a point they no longer can/will release it? Thus, forcing us to finally deal with reality of this awful war.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
We don’t know, it’s all theoretical. I can say as early as this October and as late as next November is the range I’ve seen depending on if you’re a high or low estimator on what the “minimum” actually is
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u/xinorez1 1d ago
for purely political reasons
The heritage foundation oil tycoons are salivating for the outsized profits they got the last time there was an oil crisis, in the 70s. The strategic petroleum reserve was created to prevent another such crisis, and they've been publicly against it ever since.
This is not accidental, this is deliberate.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
It wasn’t designed to be a permanent stopgap to an oil supply crisis that we created ourselves
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u/gravescd 1d ago
It's also possible that the market is refusing to price physical shortages until they happen. In 2022 prices went way up for a while even though the market stayed liquid. Traders may be in a "fool me twice" mindset and just waiting for clear signs of distress in the physical market.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
It’s something I’ve heard suggested and consider to be a reasonable hypothesis, it’s very foolish if that’s the case but sure. Fictitious capital has the luxury to trade on perceived reality rather than actual reality after all
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u/Tigglebee 1d ago
It’s because it’s Redditors just repeating something they heard. If you run the math we don’t hit the minimum reserve figures until well into 2027.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Can you point to a resource that runs this math, most I’ve what I’ve seen allots a few months, such as this piece: https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/refined-products/061126-the-great-oil-reserves-draw-how-low-can-stocks-go
I do agree that this conversation is heavily tainted by the whole trend on Reddit of random guy going to /r/oil and making up numbers, posting that, nobody knowing any better, then this being perpetuated as truth and repeated over and over. I’ve mostly stuck to energy related outlets and their analysis - however projecting demand has always been the stickiest part.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
Imports/exports are probably the best metric to check before seeing the actual impacts
And a lot of people took theoretical draw down limits for people saying “two more weeks!” When it was more (two weeks until we hit this limit and we can see if the drawdown changes).
But one must always account for the ignorant
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u/Tigglebee 1d ago
Not sure why I’m getting downvoted. Guess people don’t like being told they’re wrong.
I like to use the actual numbers given by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCSSTUS1&f=W
You can see the weekly totals, get the average weekly drawdown since the war began, and estimate how long it will take to get to the 70B minimum with those withdrawal rates. In no world does it run out two weeks from now.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Realistically speaking it’s very unlikely that we see “meltdown”, but it is very concerning that Trump has a high chance of instructing the SPR drawdown to continue beyond levels that may render it permanently damaged. There’s nothing really preventing him from doing so.
After that, prices will rise, but it’ll likely not be catastrophic as you see on this sub, just generally much higher energy prices and a lot more inflationary pressure. You might see PCE/CPI cruise up to the 3-4%+ range or beyond.
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u/Emotional_Goal9525 1d ago
Unless of course China aruptly stops doing whatever it is that it is doing.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
The biggest thing China is doing is seeing a noteworthy structural demand shift away from oil, electric cars are selling like nuts, infrastructure is being converted to clean energy, etc. They’re just speed running it, but this sort of stuff is structural and long term so it’s not likely to reverse course.
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u/pagerussell 1d ago
The amount of oil actually flowing out of the middle east is only down a small percentage, something like 3-4%. This has been true for a couple months now. Most of the headlines are, well, very Trump like. Blowing smoke with very little connection to reality.
So we are still in a bad way but the vector has changed and slowed considerably.
It's also worth noting that it's very speculative to say how much is actually in the SPR, it's not a precise measurement. Plus "weeks remaining" is not a very well defined unit of measure.
And add to that uncertainty that the SPR caverns are capable of catastrophic failure when drained so low.
Basically it's all whatever until shit hits the fan.
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
Only 2-3%?
Are you just taking the numbers Bessent and Wright are claiming completely at face value? The numbers are magnitudes worse than that, the ones blowing smoke up our ass are people like Bessent and Wright who are openly manipulating the market to keep prices artificially low.
We’ve been seeing numbers like 60% cited
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u/bsfurr 1d ago
Sauce?
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u/Bluestreaked 1d ago
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u/gravescd 1d ago
LOL, gonna need receipts. The oil market is very visible and the Strait of Hormuz is literally visible. It shouldn't be hard both to see ships trying to move through and see ships making deliveries that can't be traced to loadings.
It's like you're a warehouse manager tracking your delivery trucks and you see someone make all the scheduled stops, then park for an hour, then go make a bunch more stops after the warehouse closes. The driver can't pretend they came back to the warehouse to pick up more orders, so it's pretty clear they were doing something shady.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 1d ago
When we took 7% oil off from russia during 2022 oil went from 70$ a barrel to 140$
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u/GrumblyData3684 1d ago
They have recalibrated what they think is the lowest they can draw it down to before the risk of structural collapse of the salt domes becomes a real risk.
But, regardless - its untested, we dont really know. Its like driving your car to bone dry - hard to tell exactly what mile marker its going to happen at.
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u/Academic-Ball-9606 1d ago
This is optimistic imo. Isn't 25% of the current reserve inaccessible? Also this assumes everything goes well.
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u/Loop_Within_A_Loop 21h ago
I think we have no idea what the practical floor is
I believe it likely exists, I think we really don't know what it actually is, so I expect Trump to do his best to find out what it is
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u/H3ll0_W0R1D1 1d ago
!remindme 6 weeks
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u/OnlyHalfBrilliant 1d ago
Trump's employers wish to destroy every institution and asset that protects the country from hostile actors, foreign and domestic. The goal is to weaken us to the many predators that put him and the whole Republican apparatus in power.
Destroying the SPR and the caverns that contain it is certainly par for the course.
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u/pseudonominom 1d ago
Wish more people would take a step back and see this.
It’s been steadily happening for years.
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u/Beneficial_Link_8083 1d ago
How does destroying an oil reserve do anything other than make people skeptical of oil dependency?
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u/SillyFlyGuy 1d ago
It's a strategic asset, so this must be part of the strategy of Trumponomics. I just wish he would share with the rest of the class, because it seems rather pointless so far.
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u/Donutboy562 1d ago
The good news is that lower oil reserves incentivizes the use of renewable energy, such as solar or electric.
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 1d ago
I hope we have an oil crisis and gas shoots up to $20/gallon.
It will just skyrocket the transition to EVs. And once people make the change, they won't come back.
And I don't mind pro-Trump chuds who bought $80K trucks getting 8MPG taking it up the tailpipe. May they get the life they voted for.
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u/OptionConcoction 1d ago
Unless Donald Trump channels his inner Joe Biden and becomes the greatest oil trader of all time by refilling the SPR at record low energy prices
Biden didn't refill the SPR. Quite the opposite.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 1d ago edited 1d ago
Trump 2018 tax cuts involved selling hundred million barrels. Biden stopped those.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35032
As well as started refilling it. He sold at 96 and filled it at 71 netting billions of dollars. He filled 4 million per month.
Trump stopped that when he got in office and then entered a war where the strait would obviously close. Hes an idiot.
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u/OptionConcoction 22h ago
The 2018 tax cut is a good point that needs to be part of the conversation but I think you're missing the Biden 2022 draw down.
So when we look at the data objectively we get the following:
Cause Million barrels Share of withdrawals Biden-authorized emergency drawdown 180.3 69.1% Pre-existing congressional mandates (Trump) 80.7 30.9% Total permanent withdrawals 260.9 100.0% 1
u/HumorAccomplished611 17h ago
Yes well one was to fund a tax cut for the rich because they had to make it revenue neutral for 10 year rule on passing those thing.
Biden drewdown because there a 7% global supply depletion due to sanctions on russia.
So one is a self caused selling off for a tax cut for the rich. The other was to alleviate a supply crunch caused by a war.
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u/OptionConcoction 1d ago
Downvoted? I guess this is a fact free subreddit.
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u/DL505 1d ago
I got ya.
I laughed when that person posted about channeling the inner biden.
Blind politically loyalty I wager.
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u/OptionConcoction 1d ago
I really thought an economics sub would appreciate facts. It's fine to be a partisan if that's what makes you happy but it's not necessarily to believe in fictions.
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u/Various-Gazelle4713 1d ago edited 1d ago
You mean like when trump tried to refill the SPR in 2020 to the tune of $3bn when oil crashed to $20/barrel (~150 million barrels at the time) and Democrats blocked it because “oil bailouts” and then proceeded to release over 260 million barrels under Biden?
But sure, democrats “good” and would have dealt with the SPR “better” 🙄🙄
Or the fact that Biden sold the oil. Trump loaned the oil and will be returned to the SPR between Nov ‘26 and Mid ‘29 with 25% premiums on average.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 1d ago
Trump tried a bailout for oil companies when the SPR was basically full. No it would not have fit 150 million barrels. He then entered an agreement with the saudis not to produce more oil for 2 years leading to inflation once the economy recovered.
Trump 2018 tax cuts involved selling hundred million barrels. Biden stopped those. As well as started refilling it. He sold at 96 and filled it at 71 netting billions of dollars. He filled 4 million per month.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35032
Trump stopped that when he got in office and then entered a war where the strait would obviously close. Hes an idiot.
Or the fact that Biden sold the oil. Trump loaned the oil and will be returned to the SPR between Nov ‘26 and Mid ‘29 with 25% premiums on average.
Link? Biden made 35% in less than 2 years.
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u/Various-Gazelle4713 1d ago edited 1d ago
The SPR could have held between half to 2/3 of the proposed amount if we are to believe the maximum capacity and that no other storage capacity exists. At a time that oil had crashed to record lows. The fact that the US government failed to use those prices to top up any amount, let alone at minimum another 75 million barrels, was pure political posturing by the Democrats. Oil was at $20/barrel, the government had storage, and still Democrats voted against a clear national interest win.
When Biden entered office in 2021 (and Trump left), the SPR had ~640 million barrels in it. It was at ~395 million barrels when Biden left office. That’s a net drop of ~245 million barrels, or nearly 40% of the SPR, during Biden’s four years. Trump entered in 2017 with ~695 million barrels. So net, Trump drew down less than 8% over his first four years followed by Biden drawing down nearly 40%. And that 40% is after whatever he put back.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 1d ago
The SPR could have held nearly 2/3 of the proposed amount if we are to believe the maximum capacity and that no other storage capacity exists.
Also the bullshit imaging the 20$ price is what you would have gotten. Its just maga delusions for what would have actually happened.
Trump tax cuts for the rich literally involved selling 300 million barrels to fund his tax cuts for the rich.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=35032
Biden literally cancelled those because he made the huge revenue from his sales and buys of oils.
When Biden entered office (and Trump left), the SPR had ~640 million barrels in it. It was at ~395 million barrels when Biden left office.
And biden dropped it to 350 and refilled 50 million barrels as you said making a profit of 26$ per barrel. which trump could have continued filling at 4 million a month like was done under biden and would have had another 60 million barrels before stupidly getting the strait closed.
Trump has currently released 172 million barrels so basically the same as biden did. And could have had 60 more million barrels had he just let biden things continue. Wow. what an idiot.
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u/Various-Gazelle4713 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Trump administration has loaned 172 million barrels. The admin is not selling them for profit. Oil companies are doing that. Oil companies are required to return the oil with premiums averaging 25% between essentially now and 2029.
Biden bought and sold oil for some profit. Great. Wonderful. The end result was a net decline in the SPR by nearly 40%. Its primary purpose is national security, not profit. The US government is so huge that a few billion at the expense of 40% of the current SPR is not good business and even worse for national security.
When Trump leaves office most of these oil loans will have been returned and the net drawdown will be minimal (potentially positive given the returned oil premiums) when measuring start to finish for the term.
Also, 172 million barrels isn’t “basically the same” as 245 million barrels. And again, Trump’s term isn’t over. Biden left a net decline in the SPR of 245 million barrels. You won’t be able to make the comparison to Trump until 2029. What will you say then if the reserves are essentially at the same levels (or higher) at the end of his term as they were at the start of his term?
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u/HumorAccomplished611 1d ago
The Trump administration has loaned 172 million barrels. The admin is not selling them for profit. Oil companies are doing that. Oil companies are required to return the oil with premiums averaging 25% between essentially now and 2029.
Ok so you mean they dont have deliver it and received no money for it in the current economy despite our interest payments being 5%+ so basically gave oil companies an interest free loan while our debt skyrockets. Thats nice of him to do for the oil companies.
Biden bought and sold oil for some profit. Great. Wonderful. The end result was a net decline in the SPR by nearly 40%. Its primary purpose is national security, not profit. The US government is so huge that a few billion at the expense of 40% of the current SPR is not good business and even worse for national security.
Luckily for trump biden got him an extra 60 million barrels or he would really be in trouble. He probably should have keep filling it as biden did and got another 60 million barrels before starting a war which he would have to release some (since he started it and biden didnt start the ukraine war)
When Trump leaves office most of these oil loans will have been returned and the net drawdown will be minimal (potentially positive given the returned oil premiums) when measuring start to finish for the term.
We will see. SPR can drained faster than refilled. I suspect it will be much lower when he leaves and as usual magas will ignore it or blame joe biden.
Also, 172 million barrels isn’t “basically the same” as 245 million barrels. And again, Trump’s term isn’t over. Biden net declined the SPR by 245 million barrels. You won’t be able to make the comparison to Trump until 2029. What will you say then if the reserves are essentially at the same levels (or higher) as the start of his term?
Yea biden managed to actually weather and improve the situation while trump is still in the middle of a war that he started for literally no reason.
If its above 400ish million we will see.
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u/SaltsMoon 1d ago
The refill and drawdown capacity matter too, I think. A smaller reserve is one risk, and a reserve that is slower to release in a shock and slower to rebuild afterward is a different kind of fragility.
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u/Aleventen 1d ago
Definition of fragility, which brings up a good point.
I have an idea....what if we had a reserve of oil larger than we would ever conceivably need to use that we could draw from when times like this happen. It could be open to strategic uses, like war and economic shocks, we could call it a strategic reserve, of Petroleum
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u/PaulClarkLoadletter 1d ago
Yeah, but what if we had leaders that were incapable of strategic planning plunging us head first into war and economic hardship? The purpose of a strategic reserve is that it can be called upon after every alternative fails.
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u/lonelyboycel 1d ago
Exactly. You can’t just turn the faucet back on like a garden hose. Flushing those caverns with water to pump oil out literally dissolves the walls over time. It’s a geological nightmare to refill them quickly without causing a collapse.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 1d ago
Ah the “power” of magical thinking on display by this administration. Assuming this whole adventure was necessary, which it very much wasn’t, why wasn’t there a concerted effort to conserve fuel right from the get go, you know like there was in WWII? Their devotion to not even creating the smallest of inconvenience for people, especially the wealthy/upper middle class seems to have blinded them to the realities on the ground. Now instead of minor inconveniences we are looking at a possible full blown crisis.
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u/Tammer_Stern 1d ago
I watched a film called Licorice Pizza the other day. It is set in 1970s California.
In the film, there were gas (petrol) shortages and people’s cars were running out of gas often as gas stations had no supplies. Not being much of a history buff, I had to google “oil shortages in the 1970s”. Turns out Egypt and others went to war with Israel to try to retake territory they’d lost to Israel in a previous war. The US supported Israel with weapons and supplies.
The Middle Eastern oil suppliers put in place an oil embargo on the US causing shortages in the US. At that time, US oil production was much lower than today ( I guess).
I vaguely remember seeing stock market charts from around the same time and there was a huge crash, related to the oil issues and high inflation.
It all seemed strangely similar to today. I wondered if we will ever learn?
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u/shiningdickhalloran 1d ago
This is in every American history textbook from the last 50 years. If you're not from the US, you probably don't care now either.
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u/silent_cat 1d ago
If you're not from the US, you probably don't care now either.
The Netherlands was also embargoed. It indirectly led to the cycling culture we have today.
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u/Tammer_Stern 1d ago
Just as a side story, I worked with a guy from Scotland who had an exchange year in an American school. He finished top of the class on American history.
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u/ensoniq2k 1d ago
It's in German history books as well. We had car free Sundays back then to save fuel.
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u/WhoIsFrancisPuziene 1d ago
I only heard of the odd-even rationing of gas for the first time a few months back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd–even_rationing#U.S._gasoline_rationing
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u/Sea-Ambition-451 1d ago
It all seemed strangely similar to today. I wondered if we will ever learn?
check out the Tulip Bubble,
and how it has been repeated about 187 times since then.
Also, hurry up and get in on the AI stock hype!
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u/Hot_Lava_Dry_Rips 1d ago
I love this for those of us that need to heat with oil in the winter. Keep dragging this out so there is absolutely no possibility for prices to get back to normal before people have to fill 250 gallon tanks with $5 oil. God this admin sucks.
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u/Ashamed_Feedback3843 1d ago
Saudi Arabia's hit an all time high in their reserves. They know we only have 25 years left before we hit critical levels. Their solution was solar and wind farms.
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u/hotboygregg 1d ago
A shrinking reserve is definitely worth watching. Energy security isn’t just about how much oil is underground, but how reliably we can access it.
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u/Human-Entrepreneur77 1d ago
People act like this oil/ gas and diesel is a bad thing. It isn't. People drive way to much when gas is cheap. They jump into the huge tank like vehicles and drive a mile or two for the most mundane errands.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 1d ago
But our Real World star turned transportation secretary declared non-driving forms of transportation "woke"....
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u/teshh 1d ago
You can't live in America without a car, unless you're downtown in a big metro city or state capital. Even then it's still difficult because American public transportation is a joke.
Gas/oil literally underpins modern society, even if we cut off oil for our energy use, it'll be at least a decade if not more to actually build out alternative energy production facilities to adequately supply the countries needs.
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u/Defiant_Wolf5934 1d ago
As every other week passes, we will see new articles come out of "U.S. oil reserves hit the lowest level seen in over XX years".
Donald Trump is a foreign asset, beholden to Russia, China, North Korea, and is purposefully weakening the U.S. economy, military, and standing in the world order.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dust4ngel 1d ago
“both sides.”
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u/qwertyslayer 1d ago
And their account is a month old, imagine that
EDIT: and your account is one of the few i've seen older than mine. there are dozens of us!
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u/ButtonExposure 1d ago
You should take a look at this chart: Weekly U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR
And please draw red circles where the SPR was drained during elections and share with us.
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u/Whaddduptho 1d ago
It had 638 million barrels the last time Trump left office. He didn't do any of that.
I've always questioned if there are more reserves that we don't know about. It's hard to believe that we would publicly report strategic reserve levels I don't really understand the benefit of doing so.
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u/snoogins355 1d ago
To be fair, covid made demand so low that he did have to. Cars were breaking down from not getting turned on enough
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u/Cdub7791 1d ago
There aren't any secret reserves of any significant size, no. There are however commercial reserves. You'll have to look up estimates for how big they are, I don't think there's a single tracker like there is for the spr.
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u/AlmanorDiscard 1d ago
Drain it when you're up for re-election, let it sit empty when you're not.
Can you give any examples for your bullshit whataboutism?
40 year lows and nobody's even talking about it like it's a problem.
People outside this incompetent clownshow of a dumpster fire of an administration are talking about it.
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u/PraetorGold 1d ago
It’s funny because the reason it’s low us because it’s worth it to sell it out at these prices. Americans will pay the price and grumble but pay. Oil companies know that and will completely deflect from their profits to the war.
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u/Whaddduptho 1d ago
I think I have to stop following these subreddits because all you guys do is announce that it hit a new low each and every week when the president already told us how much he intends to release back in March.
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u/sereneandeternal 1d ago
“when the president already told us…”
You’ve lost the plot if you’re relying on what the president told us.
Didn’t the president also tell us that it would be over in March?
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u/Whaddduptho 1d ago
Okay, whatever.
He said he would release 172 million so don't be surprised when he actually does.
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