U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright plans to seek up to $20 billion to accomplish President Donald Trump’s goal of refilling the nation’s depleted oil reserve to its maximum capacity, Bloomberg writes.
The initiative would restore holdings “just close to the top” to maintain efficient operating status, Wright said in an interview on Thursday in Louisiana after touring a natural-gas export plant. The initiative may take years to full restore the holdings.
After Wright’s statements, U.S. crude futures briefly touched their highest level of the day at $67.68 a barrel in New York.
Trump said during his inaugural address in January that he planned to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, part of a broad embrace of conventional energy that has also included pledges to boost domestic oil production and roll back regulation. The storage facility—the largest of its kind—is meant to provide a cushion to guard against crude supply disruptions and was created in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s.
“Ultimately that’s what it was built for—to have the maximum security for the American people,” Wright says.
The reserve was created in a network of salt caverns and has a maximum capacity of about 700 million barrels. Holdings were sharply reduced during former President Joe Biden’s administration as gasoline prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They currently stand at 395 million barrels, according to Energy Department data.
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