The numbers are published weekly and are not in dispute. In the week ending July 17, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 311.4 million barrels [1]. On March 27 it held 415.1 million [1].
That is 103.6 million barrels gone - about a quarter of the reserve - in under four months, drawn at between five and nine million barrels a week, week after week [1].
Fortune reports this is the lowest level since early 1983, that the administration authorized withdrawal of up to 172 million barrels, and that the reserve's historic minimum threshold sits near 250 million [2]. Subtracting one from the other leaves roughly 61 million barrels of usable headroom - about ten weeks at the current pace.
The purpose of the reserve is a supply interruption: a war that stops the oil, not a war that makes it expensive. The Strait of Hormuz has not closed. Traffic through it has collapsed and shipping has gone dark, but crude is still moving, and the reserve is being drawn against a price rather than a shortage.
The price did not cooperate. The national average for gasoline is $4.111 a gallon against $3.161 a year ago, and diesel $5.278 against $3.742 [3]. Whatever the drawdown bought, it was not a lower number at the pump.
Supply is tightening elsewhere too. Russia's largest Black Sea crude outlet, the Sheskharis terminal at Novorossiysk, has loaded no tankers since Tuesday as Ukrainian drone attacks on Black Sea shipping intensified; the terminal moved an average of about 650,000 barrels a day over the first seven months of 2026, roughly a fifth of Russia's seaborne crude exports [4].
'If we wind up with a de-facto closure of the strait and this Houthi threat shuts down the Red Sea, then I think it gets bad pretty fast during August,' said Dan Pickering of Pickering Energy Partners [2]. That is the scenario the reserve exists for, and it is arriving with the reserve a quarter lighter than it was in March [1].
