Gas prices are still high, diesel is at a record high, and the reserve has shrunk more than 30% in six months. While the reserve held around 415 million barrels of oil in February, it now holds less than 285 million barrels of oil — lower than it has been since the early 1980s.
These rapid drawdowns of oil threaten the salt caverns’ structure, says Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan policy think tank. As the reserves get lower and lower, the physical facilities can get degraded, Gross says: " You can damage them by pumping too much out of them."
Thanks Obama
Article didn’t mention, but as reserves get lower, there is a forced slowdown in withdrawals, and some of the caverns are in danger of collapse which not only creates a massive restoration costs, it also make 50m (1/5th or so) barrels of reserves just disappear.
As the reserves get lower and lower, the physical facilities can get degraded, Gross says: " You can damage them by pumping too much out of them."
Why store an emergency reserve in a way where you can’t access it as needed?
Ah who am I kidding, it’s of course because it’s cheap.Cheap, fast to build, doesn’t appear obvious from the air, hard to destroy with conventional weapons. The drawback of damaging the container when you use it wasn’t considered as big an issue back when we knew what the words “strategic” and “emergency” meant. When the administration creates a new crisis every week to distract from the Epstein Files, it suddenly seems insufficient.
it’s almost as if it would’ve been a good idea to figure out some alternate energy sources beforehand
We did.
Then we decided not to use them.
We will be doing so much winning you may get tired of all this winning! 🫲🍊🫱
Republicans are expecting to lose and are going to blame all this fallout on the democrats who will be elected
And the average dumb American will fall for it and Trump will be elected president again in 2028 lol (yes, he will find a way around the 2 term limit law).
Or a Democrat will win, do nothing for 4 years, and then Trumpinator AI wins 2032
Presidential term limits aren’t a law, they’re a constitutional amendment. And there really isn’t a way for him to get around it.
He’s also signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is also a constitutional amendment. Currently with the courts to see who wins.
He’s spent and redirected funds without congressional approval, in violation of article 1.
He’s ignored the 4th and 5th amendments by deporting people without due process.
He’s in stark violation of the emoluments clause.
He’s started and continued to wage war against Iran without congressional approval, in violation of article II.
What makes you think that he’ll suddenly pay attention to the 22nd amendment, limiting him to two terms ?
It’s not like he pays attention to anything in the Constitution anyway …
Natalie wipes his ass with the constitution
MORE MORE MORE
Let’s collapse the oil energy system, so we can finally all be forced to transition to a cheaper, efficient, cleaner, and self-contained energy system like with solar.
Thanks Donny for helping the renewable energy movement!
I mean… maybe. I like clean energy, but people will starve too. I don’t see Trump’s government hopping on clean energy as a solution. They will blame and deflect. They will destroy all our national parks scavenging for resources. It will be bad.
I mean private planes will still fly and there will still be food that goes to waste. People starving isn’t because of oil shortages but because the rich won’t eat the cost and rather kick people onto the street. Now the fertilizer shortage on the other hand…
People will starve but remember the alternative is total global collapse so embrace your inner Farquad
OR the Orange Stain will invade another country. Isn’t the USA so gosh darn quirky!
This is what I likely see happening.
Canada is selling a large amount of their supplies to China and anyone else besides the U.S. right now due to tensions. Alberta already has a separatist movement that has been quietly invaded by bad actors from various U.S. organizations.
If it were possible, why did it take fossil fuels for humanity to reach 8 billion people?
Reminder: all of human history and technology up to 1850 was solar and wind powered.
I think nitrogen fertilizer made that possible more so than oil
Hydro
Keep in mind that most energy at the time was mechanical, not electric. Electrification as we know it, even in factories had not taken place yet. We didn’t even know how to use solar panels for electricity generation, so at best solar energy was used to heat water. Windmills ran water pumps but were not powerful enough to run any kind of industry. If you wanted heaps of energy you needed to build next to a river and use the flowing water to drive water wheels or similar.
Fossil fuels - oil, coal, gas - are comparably easy centralised energy. Easy to dig or drill for, easy to store and transport and then convert into mechanical and later electrical energy. You could have a coal mine in one place and the refining industry in another, power houses and industry in remote places even. Trains could run on coal and made long distance and large scale transport possible.
While dirty, the industrial revolution would not have been possible without easily accessible coal.
Electrical energy is 90%+ efficent at converting to mechanical work. Combustion is 25% efficient or so.
Exactly as I said at the beginning of the summer: they will burn the reserves until the election them immediately turn them off.
It’s a win win for them. They either lose the election and stick the Dems with a fuel crisis, or win the election and finish their dictatorship.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCSSTUS1&f=W
We’re still a month out and we mostly stopped pulling from the reserve 3 weeks ago. The last 3 weeks the reserve dropped by less than 1 million barrels, while all summer I think we were averaging more than 5 per week.
yeah he pretty much does not care about prices after the election so they are pumping out as much as possible to keep prices from skyrocketing.
Prices have already skyrocketed. They’ve doubled since he took office.
thats with massive pumping from the reserves. The true height is at least double again.
When Trump took office this time around I was paying around $2.00 a gallon. Today it was 4.19. I don’t know if I can afford much more.
oh wow. I can’t remember the last time I saw two bucks a gallon. Im lucky though in that I have only begrudgingly had a car so don’t use a whole lot. like gas going up is such a drop in the bucket vs other things. I can’t not eat.
The farmer and trucker that feed you need diesel.
Every manufactured good you come in contact with has likely been transported on a truck at some point.
yeah that is what I mean by I can’t not eat. Food inflation has been plenty noticable.
“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody" - Epstein Files star
I wonder why markets are betting against a new shortage tho.
USA has been at war or “conflicts, incursions” for all but a few years of their existence. That’s why.
The short answer is, it’s complicated. The long answer is that people are trying to build large net short positions while not spooking the bag holders.
So I watch broadcast tv and there are so many buy gold commercials which makes me wonder what they have up their sleeve for that.
Gold is money.
I would presume they are dumping their gold on the muppets
As soon as we’re on empty China or Russia will invade something.
You mean “way past the E”
The last drop of oil will be burned in a tank fighting over the last drop of oil.
Trump will invade Taiwan to ‘protect’ it from China.
Not without fuel. Carriers and submarines are nuclear. Everything else is some form of diesel.
This is Biden and Obama’s fault somehow!
It could be argued that Biden shares some of the blame here. My understanding is that his administration released almost half the SPR during Covid to a) help the global economy and b) make a killing (for the government) selling oil when prices were high.
The idea being that they’d replenish the reserves after the crisis, when prices were low/normal again.
The problem with that is that the salt caverns are rated for a limited number of drawdown cycles, so you can’t use it as a bank account. They’re more like an old-timey piggy bank, you break it to use it.
That being said, the biggest difference is of course that Biden didn’t cause Covid. Trump very much started the war with Iran.
This is the fault of Regan, Bush Snr, Bill Clinton, Bush Jnr, Obama, The DNC, GoP, billionaire media owners… can’t be bothered typing more
what a stupid design that can’t pump out emergency fluid like it was supposed to do. “has to provide emergency fluid slowly or it fails” lol wow
way to go team.
Its unavoidable by economics and geology.
The oil is stored in impermeable salt caves down in Louisiana and Texas. The hard rock salt and oil do not mix so they act as an environmentally stable storage tank that requires no maintenance and doesn’t leech into the ground. This is vastly cheaper and much much safer for very long term storage of oil.
Problem being the caverns “settle” and are partially supported by the pressure of crude oil within them. As the crude is drawn out of them the salt walls could be damaged if pressure is relieved too quickly and/or not replaced with some other support.
Additionally the pumping infrastructure for crude requires the head pressure of a full tank to hit high flows, and some caverns are emptied first. As caverns empty out there is less head pressure, and requires more pump energy to get it out of a deeper hole. Plus fully emptied caverns will not provide addition inlets for higher flow. This is primarily what drives the “limit of economical recovery” they talk about where flows begin to drop off as the reserve is emptied.
I was under the impression that you’d displace the oil with water, which helps with the pressure but comes with the caveat of leeching into the mineral and deforming the caverns?
The salt caverns are a consumable storage medium. You pump in water to remove the oil, which damages the salt caverns.
The more you pump oil in and out, the more the salt caverns degrade.
I think it’s more about the structural challenges of suddenly having that much volume pumped out of the reserves. Like at such a high rate. But I don’t know much of anything about geostability!
