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“You’re reaching the bottom of the tank.” That’s the phrase one oil executive used to describe the state of global oil stocks, which the executive said had already been relayed to senior officials in Washington. The same person gave it an unusually specific time frame: mid-to-late June, according to the word E&E News<\/a>.<\/p>\n The White House’s response was immediate and direct.<\/p>\n “Politico’s anonymous sources are wrong,” a White House official said, while an Energy Department official added that there had been no such discussions about stockpile levels, E&E News reported.<\/p>\n Four oil executives told Politico that the opposite is true, and at least two of them have already issued similar warnings.<\/p>\n The dispute goes back to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran effectively closed after US and Israeli strikes that began on February 28.<\/p>\n About one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves normally pass through the strait. The stock drawdown<\/a> has been going on since the first weeks of the crash, when the world was already burning stocks of 7.1 million barrels per day<\/a>.<\/p>\n Global oil inventories now stand at about 7.5 billion barrels, down about 500 million barrels at a rate of about 5.8 million barrels a day since the conflict began, according to Jim Burkhardt, vice president and global head. crude oil<\/a> a study by S&P Global Energy cited by E&E News.<\/p>\n Much of that oil already has buyers and is not held in reserve, Burkhardt said, and inventories in some regions could reach operating lows.<\/p>\n More oil and gas:<\/strong><\/p>\n On the U.S. side, gasoline inventories fell by 47.5 million barrels from the beginning of February to the end of May, the sharpest drop in weekly EIA data from February to May since 1990. OilPrice.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n The next largest recorded February-to-May drawdown was about 30 million barrels 15 years ago. U.S. commercial crude inventories fell by 8 million barrels individually in the past week, the eighth straight weekly decline, leaving inventories about 3% below their five-year average.<\/p>\n The strategic oil reserve took a large part of the load. SPR<\/a> Inventories fell by 9.1 million barrels in one week to 36.2 million barrels below last year’s level, with the recent drawdown being the SPR’s biggest weekly draw on record, according to OilPrice.com.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Data on oil reserves show the sharpest drop in decades<\/strong> <\/h2>\n
What does “tank bottom” mean for the strategic reserve<\/strong> <\/h2>\n