The US Department of Energy (DoE) has decided to make 30 mbl of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s (SPR’s) oil storage capacity available to US oil producers that are negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the oil price war. The first crude oil deliveries are expected to arrive in late April or early May 2020, and the SPR will be receiving up to 685,000 bbl/d. The available capacity will be increased by 47 mbl at a later stage.
In March 2020, the US administration decided to buy up to 30 mbl of crude oil by the end of June 2020 for the SPR, to comply with a presidential directive to fill up the SPR with US crude oil. The SPR has a total storage capacity of 713.5 mbl, with an available capacity of 77 mbl in underground salt caverns along the US Gulf Coast. The United States thus decided to buy around 77 mbl of crude oil from small and mid-sized US producers for an estimated US$3bn. However, the initiative failed to secure funding from the Congress, prompting the US DoE to withdraw a tender for the first part of its oil purchase programme and to suspend plans to purchase US crude oil for SPR.
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