What do geopolitics in the Middle East have to do with Texas? When it comes to oil prices and production, everything. A September 14 drone strike on two major oil processing plants in the city of Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, led to fears that global oil prices could go haywire. It could take months for the facilities, operated by Saudi Aramco, to regain full operating capacity, and oil prices are already climbing.
That prompted President Donald Trump to declare on Twitter that he would authorize the release of oil reserves from the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), half of which is located along the Texas Gulf Coast. More than 600 million barrels of oil are stored in salt dome caverns managed by the Department of Energy. (When the SPR is at its full capacity of 713 million barrels, it contains enough oil to single-handedly fuel the country for about five weeks.)
Presidents usually time releases from the SPR for when oil supplies are low and prices are high. It’s a step that’s been taken only three times before: in 1991, during the United States’ first invasion of Iraq; in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina damaged oil-and-gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico; and in 2011, after NATO-led military interventions in Libya disrupted global oil supplies.
