While you would think crude oil stores for millions of years, the fact is that once you pull it from the ground, cude oil has a shelf life at the refinery storage of about 3 years. The stuff that gets stored in salt caverns lasts indefinitely, but apparently stuff stored in tanks gets attacked by bacteria and starts to breakdown to the point where it's much less economical to refine it.
We do, but it's not a lot more. Here's the current inventory, as of March:
https://www.spr.doe.gov/dir/dir.html
The capacity is currently 797 million barrels.
Trump announced yesterday that the SPR is offering this excess storage capacity, even without purchasing the oil.
Great. That oil will be worth alot more in 3 years when the ruskies and saudis come to their senses
While you would think crude oil stores for millions of years, the fact is that once you pull it from the ground, cude oil has a shelf life at the refinery storage of about 3 years. The stuff that gets stored in salt caverns lasts indefinitely, but apparently stuff stored in tanks gets attacked by bacteria and starts to breakdown to the point where it's much less economical to refine it.