US strategic oil reserve under threat after falling below 300M barrels

Crude oil stocks in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have fallen below 300 million barrels for the first time in more than four decades, while the reserve’s ability to rapidly deliver oil is also facing challenges due to ageing infrastructure, the US Department of Energy has stated.

It said disruptions linked to the war in Iran continue to put pressure on global oil inventories, Caliber.Az reports, citing CNBC.

The SPR declined by 6.1 million barrels last week to 298.7 million barrels, leaving the reserve, established in 1975, at its lowest level since January 1983.

President Donald Trump ordered the release of 172 million barrels in March after Iran halted oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, causing the largest disruption to global crude supplies in history.

The sharp decline has raised concerns over how much further U.S. emergency oil stocks can be drawn down. The SPR has an authorised storage capacity of 714 million barrels, while the Energy Department made clear that in July that around 70 million barrels is the minimum needed to operate the reserve safely.

David Goldwyn, who served as the State Department’s special envoy for international energy affairs under President Barack Obama, said the reserve still contains enough oil to support another release if necessary.

“I’m not worried about the stability of the reserve or our ability to do another drawdown, if we needed to,” Goldwyn told CNBC.

The SPR held around 415 million barrels before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Once the release ordered by Trump is completed, U.S. government oil stocks are expected to fall to about 243 million barrels.

However, the reserve’s ability to rapidly deliver oil is also facing challenges because of aging infrastructure, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

GAO investigators found that more than a quarter of the reserve’s inventory was “not available for drawdown due to a combination of construction outages and cavern outages” as of December 2025.

A July analysis by Rapidan Energy estimated that at least 103 million barrels of the SPR’s current inventory are therefore unavailable for use.

“The SPR’s drawdown, distribution and fill capabilities are currently limited and are at risk going forward due to longstanding issues with aging infrastructure compounded with ongoing major construction intended to address them,” the GAO warned.

U.S. presidents have ordered increasingly large releases from the SPR in recent years. In 2022, President Joe Biden authorised the release of 180 million barrels in an effort to ease energy market volatility following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It remains the largest release in the reserve’s history.

The GAO described that drawdown as an “unplanned stress test” for the SPR.

“When you do a drawdown, then you accelerate kind of the degradation of the wells themselves and some of the equipment,” Goldwyn added. “It’s like anything else — you use it a lot, you have to maintain it.”

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov