US oil reserves are so low, the caverns holding them could be damaged

Waterluvian

> The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years. It was not designed for American politics. This feels like a failure of applying realistic, knowable expectations.

mindslight

> Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich told CNBC in a statement that assertions regarding cavern collapse were false. “The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Dietderich said, asserting that the Trump administration was “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be.” This statement makes me feel worse, not better. Translating from doublespeak: they are acknowledging the caverns are collapsing, and are running it into the ground like every other "critical national security asset".

ck2

yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444 not just damaged, damaged permanently, like everything else this administration is burning to the ground in our country and just making it someone else's problem to rebuild over the next CENTURY

jubilanti

Just going to leave this graph of reserves over time here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...

hnbad

Wasn't this known for a while? The problem is that simply agitating the liquid already causes immense wear because these are natural caves selected for their potential as long-term storage, not active sources. Not to mention that draining them reduces the quality of the remaining oil (much like how you never want to feed an engine from the bottom of a diesel tank). It's also my understanding that the problem is not just the reserves being drained, let alone drained so much, but also how rapidly they were drained because that again makes things worse.

tcfhgj

maybe a good time to say fare well to relying on fossil fuels for energy storage

raphinou

This is probably a naive question, but I'm wondering: isn't the usefulness of a reserve seriously diminished if using it prevents refilling it afterwards? What was the use case covered by this huge reserve if only a small part can be used before geopardising its future?

LightBug1

Question: I don't know much about US oil, but hasn't Trump been bragging endlessly about being oil independent? If so, why is this a story?

naveen99

They should just securitize middle Easter oil and let us government buy some of it. I guess Saudi aramco was a step in that direction.

OutOfHere

US Crude Oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Stocks (I:USCOSPRE) 298.69M bbl for Wk of Aug 07 2026 https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_ending_stocks_of_crude_oil...

sebazzz

So natural caverns - empty spaces in the Earth - are used to store oil, but they shouldn’t be drained because it damages them permanently. Can anyone explain why it is useful as storage then? It is like a battery you arent allowed to discharge past 30%.

nojvek

Trump may be the catalyst to renewable energy acceleration. If gas is so obscenely expensive, then economics can play its natural course. US gas prices have been subsidized for so long. Now Trump’s war is getting gasonline to realistic prices.