According to data released today by the U.S. Department of Energy, crude oil stocks in the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to 284.6 million barrels during the past week, their lowest level since October 1982.
This decline comes as part of an American plan to release roughly 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as part of a coordinated operation among the member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) designed to address disruptions to oil supplies caused by the war in the Middle East.
As a reminder, the 32 member countries of the IEA had approved, in March, the release of 400 million barrels from emergency stocks, as part of the agency’s largest-ever oil reserves release operation in its history, at a time when global flows of oil were disrupted and the volumes of crude and petroleum products moving through the Strait of Hormuz were decreasing.
The United States is implementing its contribution to this plan through emergency crude oil exchanges. In this framework, companies obtain volumes from the reserve to ensure immediate market supply, with a commitment to return these volumes to the U.S. government at a later date, in addition to additional quantities.
Note that the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve contained about 415.4 million barrels at the end of February, before the start in March of the emergency-release operations.
