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.

“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.

Prices have already skyrocketed. They've doubled since he took office.

We did.

Then we decided not to use them.

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.

OR the Orange Stain will invade another country. Isn't the USA so gosh darn quirky!

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.

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).

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.

The last drop of oil will be burned in a tank fighting over the last drop of oil.

You mean “way past the E”

Trump will invade Taiwan to 'protect' it from China.

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

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.

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!