America’s Emergency Oil Stockpile Is Running Low As Winter Nears

America’s emergency oil stockpile has fallen to 284.6 million barrels — and the Trump administration is counting on oil companies to repay what they borrowed.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve lost about 405,000 barrels in the week ending Sept. 18 and held about 121 million barrels, or 30%, less than a year earlier, according to preliminary Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.

The reserve fell below 300 million barrels in August for the first time in more than four decades, CNBC reported. An Energy Department spokesperson told the outlet that the reserve needs about 70 million barrels to operate safely.

Most of the 172 million barrels President Donald Trump authorized in March went out as exchanges, loans that oil companies must repay with additional “premium barrels,” the Department of Energy (DOE) said in April.

The department said in a March 11 statement that it had arranged to return about 200 million barrels to the reserve “within the next year” and “at no cost to the taxpayer.”

The reserve held about 415 million barrels in mid-March, when the department began the exchanges, according to a March 15 DOE announcement.

The DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s questions about how many of the borrowed barrels have been returned.

“It’s time to stop drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and begin a measured refill as previous loans are returned and prices ease,” Jason Hayes, a senior research fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, told the DCNF.

A reserve near 285 million barrels is “a very thin emergency cushion, not a working strategic stockpile,” Hayes said.