The United States hides 372 million barrels of oil on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico and will be key in the event of an energy crisis
The location of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the critical role it has played and will continue to play during energy crises.
Whether you call it the Gulf of America or the Gulf of Mexico, one fact remains the same: the US hides more than 372 million barrels of oil in the seabed. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has the capacity to hold more than 700 million barrels of oil. Current levels, however, have come down significantly since 2019, when over 645 million barrels were stored there. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, global energy prices skyrocketed as countries placed import bans on Russian energy resources. To bring down prices, the Biden administration released millions of barrels from the country’s strategic reserves, promising oil and gas companies contracts to get the reserves refilled.
The history of the national reserve dates back to the energy crisis that took hold in the US in the early 1970s after the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), today known as OPEC, sent gas prices soaring by imposing an oil embargo on the US. The energy crisis grew to such a scale that it was followed by an economic recession, prompting then-President Gerald Ford to establish the reserve. The Gulf of Mexico was identified as a suitable location and began to function as a storage site in 1977. The sanctions on Russian energy resources that led drivers in the US and many other countries to pay higher prices showed how quickly prices can rise. The strategic reserves didn’t prevent all the economic hardship felt by American families, but their existence did allow the government to increase supply quickly, which helped to push prices down.
Found deep in the seabead
The national reserve along the Gulf of Mexico is made up of four stations: Bryan Mound and Big Hill in Texas, and two additional sites in Louisiana at West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw.
According to the US Department of Energy, the petroleum is held “within the massive salt deposits that underlie most of the Texas and Louisiana coastline.” These “caverns,” which are the individual units found within the seabed, allow the government to reduce the cost of storing the resource, “costing up to 10 times less than above-ground tanks and 20 times less than hard rock mines.”
The caverns, of which there are sixty total, are described as “cylindrical in shape with a diameter of 200 feet and a height of 2,500 feet” and are able to store anywhere between six and 37 million barrels.
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