Trump Pledges Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release to Combat Energy Costs

The president pledged to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve "right to the top." Instead, with crude soaring past $90 and the reserve still only 58% full, he's draining it — and experts say it won't be enough.

The Decision

On March 11, 2026, President Donald Trump authorized the release of 172 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation's emergency crude stockpile buried in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana [1]. The decision, announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, marked a dramatic reversal for a president who had spent years criticizing his predecessor for depleting the same reserve [2].

"I filled it up once, and I'll fill it up again, but right now, we'll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down," Trump said [1].

The release will begin next week but will take approximately 120 days to deliver all barrels to the market, according to Wright [1]. It represents the U.S. contribution to a far larger international effort: the International Energy Agency's unanimous agreement among its 32 member countries to release 400 million barrels — the largest coordinated emergency oil release in the agency's more than 50-year history, more than double the volume released after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 [3][4].

The Crisis Behind the Decision

The trigger is the Iran conflict, which erupted on February 28, 2026, and has rapidly reshaped global energy markets. Iranian naval forces have effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which approximately 20 million barrels of oil — roughly 20% of global daily consumption — normally transit each day [5][6].

Source: FRED / Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Data as of Mar 11, 2026CSV

The consequences have been immediate and severe. The region's top oil producers — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Kuwait — have suspended shipments of as much as 140 million barrels to global refiners [5]. Qatar declared force majeure on its massive gas exports after Iranian drone strikes on energy infrastructure, with officials estimating at least a month before normal production levels can resume [7].

WTI crude oil prices surged from approximately $67 per barrel before the conflict to above $94 by March 9 — a jump of more than 40% in less than two weeks [8]. Brent crude, the international benchmark, has been even more volatile, briefly touching $119.50 per barrel before settling around $103 [6]. The speed of the price spike has caught markets and policymakers off guard.

Pain at the Pump

For American consumers, the math is straightforward and painful. The national average gasoline price stood at approximately $2.90 per gallon during the week of February 24, before the conflict began [9]. By March 9, it had reached $3.50 per gallon [10]. By mid-week on March 11, AAA reported the national average at $3.58, with further increases expected [1].

Source: FRED / U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data as of Mar 11, 2026CSV

Regional disparities are stark. Los Angeles gas prices surged 53 cents in a single week to $5.18 per gallon [11]. California remains the only state with averages above $5, but Washington state ($4.69), Hawaii, Nevada, and Oregon have all exceeded $4 per gallon [11]. Analysts warned that prices in many states could climb an additional 20 to 50 cents per gallon in the coming days, with diesel potentially rising 35 to 75 cents [9].

The price shock compounds existing cost-of-living anxieties. Higher fuel costs ripple through the economy, increasing transportation expenses for businesses and raising the price of goods that travel by truck, rail, or ship.

The Unfulfilled Promise

The timing of the SPR release carries particular political irony. Trump had made replenishing the reserve a signature promise since the 2024 campaign, repeatedly attacking President Biden for drawing down the stockpile after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine [12].

Biden released nearly 300 million barrels from the reserve when gasoline prices soared in 2022, reducing the stockpile from a peak above 600 million barrels to roughly 347 million — its lowest level since 1983 [12][13]. Trump called the drawdown politically motivated and pledged during his inaugural address in January 2025 to "bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world" [12].

More than a year later, the reserve holds approximately 415 million barrels — about 58% of its authorized 714-million-barrel capacity [2][14]. While the stockpile has increased modestly from its Biden-era low, it remains far short of the "right to the top" standard Trump set for himself. His One Big Beautiful Bill, signed July 4, 2025, included $218 million for reserve maintenance and $1.3 billion for new petroleum purchases, but the refill has proceeded slowly, hampered in part by aging salt cavern infrastructure [15][13].

Now, instead of filling the reserve, the administration must drain it further. The planned 172-million-barrel release would reduce the SPR to roughly 243 million barrels — just 34% of capacity and well below the level experts consider adequate for national energy security. The administration has stated it will replace the oil with 200 million barrels within the next year "at no cost to the taxpayer," though the mechanism for achieving this remains unclear [14].

A Global Response — With Limits

The IEA's 400-million-barrel coordinated release is unprecedented in scale. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol characterized it as the largest emergency deployment of strategic reserves in the organization's history [3]. Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other member nations have committed to releasing portions of their own stockpiles, though the agency has not set a firm timeline, stating that reserves will be released "over a time frame appropriate to the circumstances of each of its 32 member countries" [4].

The political dynamics around the release are notable. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Trump to tap the reserve — the same Schumer who in 2020 opposed Trump's effort to purchase oil for the reserve when prices were historically low [16]. Republicans, who attacked Biden relentlessly over gasoline prices, have been more muted in their criticism of the current spike, with some characterizing rising energy costs as a "small price to pay" for the Iran campaign [17].

Yet the initial market reaction to the IEA announcement was sobering. Despite the record commitment, crude prices quickly climbed higher, once again surpassing $90 per barrel by late Wednesday [18]. The market's verdict was clear: 400 million barrels sounds enormous, but it represents only a few days of global consumption against a disruption that could last weeks or months.

What Experts Say: A Bandage, Not a Cure

Energy analysts are nearly unanimous in their assessment: the SPR release will help at the margins but cannot solve the fundamental supply crisis.

"The SPR can help, but it's not a silver bullet, and it's not going to take away all the pressure on consumer prices," said Nicholas Mulder, a professor at Cornell University who studies economic impacts of conflicts [19].

A Treasury Department analysis from 2022 found that coordinated SPR releases lowered gas prices by 17 cents to 42 cents per gallon — meaningful but modest given the scale of the current disruption [19]. Unilateral U.S. releases had an even smaller impact, reducing prices by just 13 to 31 cents per gallon [19].

Daniel Raimi, a fellow at the energy think tank Resources for the Future, noted that even a coordinated release will have a modest impact when set against global oil trade volumes of approximately 100 million barrels per day [19]. Petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan put it more starkly: even if the U.S. released every barrel in the SPR, it would equal only about three weeks of the shipments that normally transit the Strait of Hormuz [19].

There are also physical constraints. The SPR can release a maximum of roughly 4.4 million barrels per day, and it takes at least 13 days for oil from the reserve to reach the market after a presidential order [19][14]. The release rate can further decline as cavern levels drop — a problem exacerbated by the aging infrastructure of the four Gulf Coast storage sites.

"The thing about the emergency stockpiles is you can only use them once," warned Neil Atkinson, visiting fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics. "When they're gone, they're gone" [19].

The Real Fix Is Geopolitical

Multiple analysts converge on the same conclusion: the most effective way to lower oil prices is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restore the physical flow of crude from the Persian Gulf [7][19].

Energy market expert Adi Imsirovic suggested that no amount of reserve releases can substitute for making the strait safe for tankers [19]. The CSIS analysis framed the dilemma in structural terms: the world's energy infrastructure was built around the assumption that the Hormuz chokepoint would remain open, and no emergency mechanism can fully replace 20 million barrels per day of throughput [7].

The duration of the conflict is therefore the key variable for energy markets. If hostilities end quickly and the strait reopens, the SPR release will serve as an effective bridge. If the conflict becomes protracted — or if infrastructure damage to Gulf state refineries, terminals, and pipelines proves extensive — the reserve drawdown will have bought time but not a solution [5][7].

Complicating matters, damaged facilities in the region may take weeks or months to repair even after fighting stops, meaning a return to pre-war supply levels is far from guaranteed [5].

Historical Precedent and the Stakes Ahead

The SPR has been tapped in genuine emergencies before: 17.3 million barrels during the 1991 Gulf War, 11 million barrels after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, 30 million barrels during the 2011 Libyan crisis, and Biden's record ~300 million barrels during the 2022 Ukraine-driven price spike [13]. Each time, the release provided temporary relief while the underlying disruption resolved.

The current crisis dwarfs all previous ones in scale. The Strait of Hormuz closure represents the single largest sustained disruption to global oil supply since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and possibly ever. The 400-million-barrel IEA release is proportional to the severity, but so too is the risk: if the conflict continues, the world's strategic reserves will be significantly depleted, leaving nations more vulnerable to the next crisis.

For Trump, the stakes are both economic and political. Rising gasoline prices are consistently among the most politically damaging developments for any incumbent, and the current spike threatens to undermine the economic gains he has championed. The SPR release buys time — perhaps 120 days, perhaps less. What happens after that depends on events in the Persian Gulf that no amount of oil from salt caverns in Louisiana can control.

The Bottom Line

The 172-million-barrel SPR release is a necessary and defensible response to a genuine energy emergency. But it carries significant costs: further depleting a reserve that was never adequately refilled, providing only temporary and partial price relief, and reducing the nation's cushion against future disruptions. The administration's promise to replenish 200 million barrels within a year will be tested against a market where oil above $90 makes every barrel expensive to replace.

The fundamental equation remains unchanged. The Strait of Hormuz handles one-fifth of the world's oil. Until it reopens — or the world finds a way to live without it — no reserve, however strategic, can fill the gap.