The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will run dry on …

What is this site?

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is America's emergency oil supply: hundreds of millions of barrels of crude stored in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast, built after the 1973 oil embargo so the country could never be held hostage at the pump again. On February 28, 2026, Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz and the White House authorized an emergency release of 172 million barrels, drained faster than the reserve has ever been drained before. The reserve has been draining ever since, and in August 2026 it fell below 300 million barrels for the first time since 1983.

This site tracks the drain with official government numbers. Every figure comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Weekly Petroleum Status Report, published each Wednesday. No models, no sources you can't check.

From 2019 to zero

How it got here: Congress spent the late 2010s selling reserve oil to pay for unrelated legislation. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a 180-million-barrel release, still the largest single authorization on record, and a slow refill ran through 2025. Then Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in February 2026, and the 172-million-barrel emergency release that followed is the drain this page counts down.

The price at the pump

This is what the drain is holding back. Strategic releases are the government's main tool for keeping this line down; the Hormuz closure reached the pump within weeks, and the only reason it wasn't worse is the drain charted above. When the reserve is gone, so is the tool.

Forty-four years of the reserve

This is the entire history of the SPR, from its early fill in the 1980s to today. Every previous emergency shows up as a barely visible dent: Desert Storm in 1991, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Libya disruption in 2011. The 2022 Ukraine-war release was the first structural cliff. The 2026 Hormuz release is the second, and it started from far less altitude. The dashed red line is the countdown made visible: the last four weeks' average draw, extended in a straight line until the reserve hits zero. It is shallower than the cliff itself because the crisis-peak drain of early spring has eased; if that pace ever resumed, the dry date would move roughly a year closer.

The cliff, up close

Eighteen months of weekly data. Through 2025 the reserve was actually being slowly refilled: that is the flat shelf around 400 million barrels. The Hormuz closure ends the plateau overnight: within weeks the SPR was draining faster than in any previous crisis, and it has now lost roughly 117 million barrels since the closure.

How fast is it draining?

Each bar is one week's change. Red bars are withdrawals. At the peak of the crisis the reserve was losing nearly 10 million barrels a week. The pace has eased since, but it has not stopped. One build-week since March is not a refill program. The dry-date countdown at the top of this page is driven by the average of the four most recent bars.

Strategic vs. commercial oil

Commercial crude inventories, the oil refiners and traders hold privately, still look nearly normal. That is not reassuring, because they look normal because of the drain this site tracks: barrels released from the reserve are sold straight into the commercial system, covering the supply that no longer arrives through Hormuz. Even so, private stocks have slipped since the strait closed. When the releases slow or stop with the shortage unresolved, the drawdown moves to these private tanks, and there is no backstop behind them. The white line is the countdown. The red line is the alarm: the week commercial stocks start falling in earnest is the week the shortage reaches the real economy. Private industry has held more crude than the government since late 2022; what is new is that the government's share is now scheduled to hit zero.

The economy

Crude is where an oil shock enters the economy, and it is the line the reserve exists to hold down. Even with a release of historic scale, oil is still up sharply since the strait closed; the stock market wobbled, then absorbed it. That is what a working buffer looks like. The open question is what this chart does the next time, when the buffer is gone.

Methodology & honesty

The dry date is calculated in one line: current SPR level ÷ average draw over the last four weekly reports, projected forward from the latest report date. Nothing more.

Contact the author

Questions, corrections, or a better data source? This site is maintained by Kidnapped Robots. Corrections are welcome and get fixed fast; the methodology only works if people can challenge it.

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