The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level in more than 40 years, standing at 340.3 million barrels as of June 12.
That marks the most depleted the reserve has been since the summer of 1983, when the nearly 50-year-old SPR was still being filled for the first time.
The Trump administration has been leaning heavily on emergency stockpiles to keep oil flowing globally and prevent domestic fuel prices from spiraling further upward.
In early March, the U.S. agreed to release 172 million barrels as part of a coordinated 400-million-barrel drawdown by International Energy Agency members, the largest such intervention in the organization’s history.
During the second week of June alone, commercial crude stockpiles fell 8.3 million barrels, while another 8.9 million barrels were drained from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, marking the 10th consecutive week of declining U.S. reserves.
Inventories at the critical Cushing, Oklahoma oil hub dropped to just 20 million barrels, pushing the country’s largest commercial storage facility to what analysts describe as an “operational stress” level.
Analytics firm Kpler estimates the world lost 1.15 billion barrels of oil supply during the war, leaving global markets in an increasingly precarious state.
President Trump addressed the severity of the situation at the G7 summit in France, warning about how close reserves came to running dry before the Strait of Hormuz was reopened.
“We run out of reserves at about four weeks,” Trump said, discussing the recent memorandum of understanding with Iran. “You know, there are reserves all over the world, and we would really run out, and there’ll be a time when you wouldn’t be able to get it.”
Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, described the extraordinary pressure now falling on American stockpiles amid the global supply crunch.
“The U.S. is the supplier of last resort,” Smith said. “Everybody’s coming to the U.S. to pull barrels out of it because there’s not the availability elsewhere.”
The situation is compounded by a series of unresolved structural problems, including nearly 1 billion barrels of worldwide petroleum reserves depleted and not being replenished.
Mothballed refineries have yet to come back online, China still has not resumed importing large oil volumes, and Trump declared the interim peace deal “over” amid renewed drone and rocket exchanges.
With no long-term peace agreement in sight and Trump prioritizing lower fuel prices ahead of midterm elections, analysts see little chance the U.S. will begin restocking its reserves anytime soon.
Trump has authorized the full release of 172 million barrels spread over several months, meaning domestic and strategic supplies could fall significantly lower before any replenishment effort begins.
