[anigbrowl]

An interesting fact to consider is that the US stockpile (the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) is reported as the total of sour (high sulfur) and sweet (low sulfur) crude oil. The sweet stock makes up about 1/3 of the reserve and hardly varies at all. This is because US refineries are virtually all configured for sour crude: due to a mistaken belief in the 1990s that sweet crude was running out, the industry bet the farm on sour crude refining, and if sour crude runs low, it's extremely economical to switch.

As a result, almost all the draw from the SPR is of sour crude (currently ~5 million barrels/week). However, you can't just use up all the reserve because as levels get lower brine must be pumped into the storage chambers to retain pumping pressure, and the more brine that is pumped, the more the output quality declines.

The weekly reports indicate a total in the SPR of about 300mbb, of which ~100 are sweet and 200 sour. But for the reasons above, output becomes unusable one the sour levels fall to ~140-150mbb, at which point there is almost certainly a severe diesel supply shock. At current drawdown rates, that would be sometime around October/November, right in the middle of harvest season when demand for diesel is highest.

There's more complexity to this than I want to type out in a HN comment, but not that much more. Draw your own conclusions.

[anigbrowl]

Should have said 'extremely uneconomical to switch. Sorry for the confusion.

[scheme271]

I think the reserves have more complex dynamics. The law requires 250 million barrels to be kept but the pumping rate decreases as more is pumped. Also, there's various estimates that indicate that the storage areas will lose structural integrity and start to collapse at levels higher than 250M barrels. I'm not sure anyone really knows about the levels for sure and the best estimates are probably kept secret for security reasons.

[3eb7988a1663]

Not that the administration is trustworthy, but they recently announced that the structural floor is ~70M barrels. Which is significantly lower than other public estimates. Which strikes me as an attempt to ease the market that there is significantly more breathing room.

[anigbrowl]

That seems a bit optimistic to me. I'm no expert, but a relevant and recent examination of the physical SPR facilities (published just last month) is available at https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-106918.pdf

[nxobject]

This is incredibly superficial, but that’s the most thoughtfully laid out and typeset official report I’ve read in ages.

[kccqzy]

> would be sometime around October/November, right in the middle of harvest season

Right in the middle of election season.

[neilellis]

You guys still having elections?

[specproc]

This could well be the last one for a while

[kashunstva]

Or the previous one may have been the last one for a while.

[actionfromafar]

Right in the middle of "election" season. FTFY.

[eliotho]

This is an interesting insight, as usable reserves < reported reserves the clocks in the model are optimistic

[zzzeek]

Well that's also election time so the timing could not be better

[veqq]

> virtually all configured for sour crude

They have retooled them in the past 40 years for the actually accessible inputs and desired distillates.

[wombatpm]

Converting from sour to sweet is easier than sweet to sour. Because the sulfur in sour is the catalyst killer. You may have issues in the early processing steps because of lower viscosity, but you can do blending if necessary.

[brokencipher]

Isn't this the reason why they specifically targeted Venezuela, to get their oil?

[jml7c5]

No, the two interventions are unrelated. Every indication is that they thought Iran would be a quick war with minimal impact on oil markets. Even if they did think the Strait of Hormuz would be closed for a long time, controlling Venezuela's oil does not help — it takes much longer than two months for Venezuela to meaningfully increase oil production. (And oil is ~fungible, so it doesn't really matter if the US is involved with production and sale. All that matters is that it's produced and sold by anyone.)

[pohl]

Not completely unrelated. Both were likely entered to distract from the same news story dogging him every 24hr cycle.

[throw310822]

No, the attack on Iran was simply instigated by Israel, which has been trying to push the US in a war with Iran since at least 20 years.

Trump has a long history of doing what Israel wants- it's him who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem (which was illegally annexed by Israel), tore up the nuclear agreement with Iran, sanctioned the ICC, sponsored accords to get Arab states to accept the occupation of Palestine, and just the other day offered Saudi Arabia a civilian nuclear program if they do just this one favour to Israel (again the Abraham accords). His son in law Kushner is a personal friend of Netanyahu, like his father (who was nominated ambassador to France). Basically Trump has always been Netanyahu's tool.

[victorbjorklund]

Stop taking away responsibility for US actions. As you say Israel has asked US for a war with Iran everyday for 20 years and US has said no everytime. Now they said yes. So clearly US was able to say no and the choice to say yes was theirs.

[throw310822]

Of course the US are entirely responsible for their actions. They're doubly responsible because not only they engaged in a reckless and illegal war, but also because they did it out of subservience to another country. The US politicians who promptly pledge their loyalty to Israel every time they're asked to (i.e. almost all of them), they are fully responsible.

[themaninthedark]

I disagree with the current Iran action, however we can't just say that Iran has been forthcoming and compliant with their agreements.

>During the 1990s and early 2000s, Iran developed several undeclared sites, which were identified by international observers in 2002 and 2009. Following the collapse of negotiations with the EU-3 in 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors found Iran in non-compliance with its NPT safeguards agreement,[6][7][8] leading the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to pass a series of resolutions between 2006 and 2010 demanding a suspension of Iran's enrichment-related activities and targeting Iran’s banking, trade, and energy sectors.

>In late 2003, Iran was facing the prospect of censure and agreed to a degree of cooperation. In October 2003, Iran and the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany (the "EU-3") struck the Tehran Agreement: Iran pledged to temporarily suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, allow more intrusive inspections by signing the Additional Protocol, and clarify past nuclear work. This deal, reached just ahead of an IAEA Board of Governors deadline, was intended to build confidence while a longer-term solution was negotiated. However, Iran's cooperation was halting and incomplete.[22]

>In 2004 and 2005, the IAEA uncovered inconsistencies and omissions in Iran's disclosures, such as experiments with plutonium separation and advanced P-2 centrifuge designs that Iran had failed to report. Iran's suspension of enrichment proved short-lived as soon it resumed certain nuclear activities. In June 2004, the IAEA's Board rebuked Iran for not fully cooperating. By September 2005, the Board found Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards (a formal trigger for UN Security Council involvement). Iran reacted by ceasing voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol and restarting enrichment work. In April 2006, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had enriched uranium to 3.5% U-235, low enriched uranium suitable for nuclear fuel, using a cascade of 164 centrifuges at Natanz. This marked Iran's first public entry into the nuclear fuel-cycle capability club.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran

This culminated in the US withdrawal of the treaty after Israeli intelligence uncovered further evidence of Iran breaking the treaty conditions.

[edmundsauto]

Tell the story of what’s happened in the last 15 years, not just the 2000s under Bush 2.

In 2015, the JCPOA was signed to address some of these shortcomings. It especially enhanced verification and started discussions between Iran and the rest of the world. But rather than build on it, the 45th administration decided to cut it up without alternatives in place.

[podocarp]

Ah, if only Iran did not get pushed onto the path of being a rogue state by the CIA. If only we just let other countries be normal.

[elzbardico]

Considering Israel has a illegal nuclear program, why should we hold Iran to a higher standard?

[petcat]

Venezuela and Iran are strategic targets to control China's supply of crude oil. That's pretty much it.

USA can produce all the oil/energy it needs for itself. Everything else is about controlling the energy supply to adversaries.

[jsiepkes]

As the parent comment explains, the US can't produce all the oil it needs, because it's refinery capacity isn't aligned with the type of oil it pumps from the ground.

[SJC_Hacker]

It can be if necessary. It’s just the US refineries can deal with the crappy oil produced by places like the tar sands in Canada, where few other countries currently can

[duzer65657]

The Venezuelan oil is essentially the same, and Canadian bitumen is much cheaper on the world market to account for this.

[ColdStream]

I have seen a few slightly different figures but it is something like 40% of oil still needs to be imported to get the right mix for the current economic setup.

[podocarp]

This is frequently stated as a goal of the 5D chess but it is ridiculous if you think about it. China is not buying oil and gas from Russia at discount rates (and had been for quite a while). They haven't performed blood rites with Venezuela that force them to only get oil from Venezuela. They can buy it from anybody who is willing to sell. Even if you sink the Middle East into the ocean they will still be able to buy oil from others, albeit at much higher prices. So no, this is not a strategic target, unless you actually want to attrition them to bankruptcy with oil prices. But this path is and should be very unpopular with regular citizens.

[elzbardico]

But it is a free market. If prices in the international market are at 2x the prices in the domestic market, nobody would sell oil in the domestic markets. The US would have to introduce export controls.

But can the US do it? No, because it lacks refining capability for a lot of the kind of oil it produces and retrofitting existing refineries is a multi-year, very expensive project.

[kashunstva]

Oh. It wasn’t because the authoritarian leader was involved somehow in drug trafficking and needed kidnapping? Or was that a distraction from the distraction?

[pbkompasz]

I can't believe Joe Biden did that!

[cheschire]

Random internet person says something that nobody is talking about. Gemini says random internet person is exaggerating the severity on most points.

I guess I’ll wait and see if someone provides citations because this feels like a nothing burger.

[anigbrowl]

We are talking about this, because we're discussing a model of oil price vs availability which includes modeling of national oil reserves. I'm pointing out that the popularly understood amount of US reserve levels somewhat overestimates the available cushion, and provided two different and easily verifiable reasons for considering it to be smaller than the headline number. I also specified that I was oversimplifying for the sake of brevity. I also indicated which assumptions and approximations were inputs in my heuristic.

You could easily ask Gemini to critically appraise each of these steps and get the detail you feel you're lacking; I know this because I employed it over the last few months to research this topic, but did so in piecewise fashion. Apparently you opted for the easier 'ctrl-V is this true' type of inquiry, which reflected your natural skepticism back toward you.

[cheschire]

What you also provided was conjecture based on… oh right you didn’t provide what it’s based on. Citation needed.

What I meant with nobody talking about it was that outside of your post your bullet points aren’t being brought up in any reliable sources.

[anigbrowl]

Consider the possibility that this is a failure of the business press rather than on my part. I linked to the recent GAO report on the physical state of the SPR facilities and infrastructure elsewhere in the thread. You might also find this trucking industry overview of the fuel supply situation illuminating. I leave it to you to dig around in the Department of Energy's website until you find the (obscure) tracking data for sour vs sweet stocks and integrate with other information, from storage chamber maintenance issues to anomalous outcomes in recent commodity loan offerings.

https://tanktransport.com/2026/07/strategic-petroleum-reserv... https://www.plainview-energy.com/p/us-spr-deep-dive-part-iv-...

[tclancy]

I get what you’re getting at, but do you honestly expect mainstream press to have a story on the technical details of oil production?

[lanstin]

Kind of? It is of central importance at this time.

[cheschire]

There was a time...

[tclancy]

This was never a thing.

[etdznots]

Grok, please check if this comment is right