The US now has just 41 days of crude oil supply on hand, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the thinnest cushion in roughly 44 years, according to Bank of America Global Research data that Bloomberg compiled and Barchart circulated Sunday.
The SPR itself held 293.4 million barrels in the week ending August 14, the lowest level since December 1982 and down from about 415 million barrels in March, before the Iran war began disrupting oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Barchart flagged the same metric in July, when it stood at 43 days, itself a 45-year low. The additional two-day drop since then reflects the pace of an emergency release Washington committed to as part of a 172-million-barrel US contribution to a 400-million-barrel, IEA-coordinated drawdown among member nations.
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Crude and petroleum liquids moving through the Strait of Hormuz averaged just 4.9 million barrels a day in the second quarter, down from 21.6 million barrels a day in the quarter before the February war began, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The agency doesn’t expect relief before September, when it assumes traffic will start recovering.
Oil prices have swung sharply as a result. Brent crude fell as low as $69 a barrel in early July after Washington and Tehran signed a short-lived memorandum of understanding, then spiked back above $105 later that month once tanker attacks resumed. Trump told Axios this month that the US is “only semi-negotiating” with Iran, saying he would lean on the ongoing naval blockade rather than launch further strikes.
“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” Trump told reporters in June, warning against over-relying on the stockpile even as his administration continued drawing it down. The BofA chart puts the long-run average at 65 days of supply, a level the country hasn’t approached since 2022.
A large reserve doesn’t guarantee price stability on its own, but a thinner one leaves markets with less room to absorb the next shock, whether from the Strait of Hormuz or somewhere else.
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The first rule of the study of history – context context context. Policies do not simply poof! Jump out of the tall black hat like a white rabbit pulled out by its ears.
Marshal a five-star U.S. Army general, served as Army Chief of Staff during World War II, and one of the principal architects of Allied military strategy. He became Secretary of State in 1947, where he proposed the European Recovery Program that became known as the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan worked in conjunction with the Containment Policy – the Two legs of Truman’s strategic post war Foreign Policy which produced the fruits according to Ron Paul – the US has military bases in more than 80 countries! According to Democracy NOW (a socialist anti-Israel noise) the US has over 750 military bases across the world.
The first rule of the study of history – context context context. Policies do not simply poof jump out of the tall hat like a rabbit pulled out by its ears. Post war Europe – utterly destroyed. US industrial might supplied the Allies that European civil war oil, gas, materials and equipment! Who now would buy American goods? Then came the utter shock of the fall of China to Communism in ’49. The Marshall Plan (as a consequence) traded US military bases stationed in all countries which accepted this US aid to rebuilt. Thereafter the NATO alliance forged to restrict the influence of the Soviets! The first rule of US strategic foreign policy from Washington’s farewell address to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 – other countries follow US dollar diplomacy. Monroe Doctrine, dollar diplomacy, Bretton Woods, post-1945 security architecture. Every great power does this (Rome, Britain), but the U.S. version – reflects like a mirror – the unmatched industrial and financial engine after 1945.
Consequently, while personally my politics rejects US involvement with Europe – especially its Government creation of monopolies – from tea to Central Banking. Wilson’s passage of the Central Bank which tied the US economy to Europe prior to the outbreak of WWI – directly contributed to the US joining the Allied alliance due to the debts owed to the US. Bureaucrats unilaterally made these decisions without any hindrance over overwatch by the 3 Constitutional Branches of Government. The post-Civil War Greenback restriction (National Banking Acts) perversely favored Northern industrial and banking elites—the Robber Barons.
After the ’29 Wall Street Collapse, the Fed duplicated the error made by Congress post Civil War and reduced the money supply by some 33%! Clearly the Fed bureaucraps not ignorant that the post Civil War restriction of the Greenback currencies established the Robber Barons – together with their monopolies! Actions set off their set –chain reaction domino effect — like a rock thrown into the pond produces ripples\consequences. The Fed restriction of the money supply forced FDR to a semi-fiat currency where gold sold at a fixed unchanging price. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, implies a strong similarity to collectivization under Stalin’s Communist state-enforced policy between 1928 and 1940 that forced peasants to give up private farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy) to increase agricultural output for industrialization. Both state-directed socialism, as witnessed through the Agricultural monopolies established by Washington.
Mass distortions that produced unintended hardship and long-term structural damage, which permanently destroyed the Homestead Act of 1862. Washington under FDR duplicated the European tradition of establishment Corporate monopolies. Later the Supreme Court ruled that Corporations qualify as people! This ruling, a legal fiction, permits those Washington establishment corporate monopolies to operate with constitutional protection by dominating the revolving door non elected Federal bureaucracies.
Just as its post Civil War “Carpet Baggers” bureaucrats attempted to destroy the Rights of States to bureaucratically regulate trade and commerce within the States. The 14th Amendment (1868) exposes: to the victors go the spoils. It compares to the post 9/11 Patriot Act in its scope! As a legal crowning achievement: it nationalized the Bill of Rights and created the “corporations as people” loophole. Both – deliberate bureaucratic expansions of federal power that eroded the Constitution’s State Republic federalism. The Supreme Court has never overturned this vile Santa Clara fiction or the broader “corporate personhood” doctrine; it has repeatedly deferred. However, perhaps the collapse of Roe vs Wade the start of reducing the Federal debt by means of restoring States Rights to bureaucratically regulate intra-State trade & commerce.
Truman took America to war in Korea through a Chapter VII UN decree – this violated the terms of the US Constitution and all US Presidents have ignored (to paraphrase Bush) that God Damn scrap of paper. As if ‘police actions’ addressed in the language of the Constitution. Interesting that the US Supreme Court has failed to weigh in on the merits/demerits of Executive ‘police actions’.
Washington and Jefferson rejected copying the ways of European governments specifically in Central Banking – government established monopolies – which so corrupts the American society today. FDR’s socialism has its economic consequences visible through the post Cold War Democrapic Socialist Party today. Washington and Jefferson rejected copying European government models precisely to avoid central banks and corporate monopolies that corrupt society. Wilson’s Fed (1913), Lincoln’s bond-financing and greenback policies, FDR’s New Deal, the Supreme Court’s Santa Clara fiction, and Reconstruction’s Carpet Bagger overreach all extended the same trajectory. Truman’s Korea (UNSC Resolution 83) bypassed the Constitution’s declaration-of-war clause and the War Powers Resolution; every president since has treated “police actions” as executive authority. The Supreme Court has never weighed in on the merits of those police actions or struck down the 14th Amendment corporate loophole.
The Confederate cause of States Rights, ((while the issue of slavery – enslaved the emotions of post Civil War Americans to this day)), Lincolns’ interpretation of the Constitutional Commerce Clause an utter abomination comparable to him sneaking his male lover into the White House! The industrial revolution defines the Civil War far more than does the issue of slavery; Lincoln paid for his rape of the South through forcing banks to hold Treasury bonds – which set the stage for Wilson’s Xmas Eve rump-Congress surprise!
Russia’s Crimean War defeat caused the Tzar to likewise switch his economy away from a feudal agricultural based economy to an industrial based economy in the 1860s. This action likewise resulted in 4 Russian civil wars in 1905 and twice in 1917, followed by the White counter revolution. Both Stalin and Mao industrialized their economies! Post WWII, America basically the only industrialized economy on the Planet still standing … other than Stalin’s USSR. The Cold War ensued in recognition of this fact. During the Ike Presidency Britain & France attempted to illegally seize the Suez Canal from Nasser. Had they succeeded London and Paris would dominate the balance of power in the Middle East.
There defeat in Egypt caused the PM to resign, and France under de Gaulle in 1966 left NATO! A year later the Israeli shocking victory caused these 2nd rate powers to attempt a rewrite of history and demand that the Jewish State “genie” return back to its trivial post ’48 borders. London switched to a pro Arab alliance by in 1939 with Chamberlain’s White Paper which effectively annulled the League Mandate to establish a Jewish National home in Palestine.
Trump 1.0 derided European less than 2% participation in NATO and European Capitals in their turn mocked him. The post 2023 Gaza War excludes the UN Britain and France and Russia as partners in the “Board of Peace” during Trump 2.0. Actions have consequences and a definite shift away from post USSR Soviet communism collapse and toward a different set of ‘target allies’ perhaps best describes’ Trump 2.0 America First foreign policy of follow the US Dollar diplomacy.