Barrels remaining
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The United States is draining its Strategic Petroleum Reserve faster than at any point in its history. This date is what happens if the last four weeks' average draw simply continues until the tanks hit zero. It is arithmetic, not a forecast. That is exactly the point.
See the datamillion barrels · weekly history + straight-line scenarios from today
Same data, shorter memory, and every future drawn at once. The white line is what actually happened since 2019: the slow sell-downs, the 2022 Ukraine release, the failed refill, the 2026 cliff. From today's level the chart fans out into the possible futures. The top edge is the best case: every withdrawal stops today and the line goes flat. The bottom edge is the worst case already on record: the drain returns to the worst four consecutive weeks of this crisis. The bright red line between them is the current pace, and it is the one the countdown at the top of this page follows. Anything inside the shaded wedge is reachable without assuming anything that has not already happened.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is America's emergency oil supply: hundreds of millions of barrels of crude stored in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast, built after the 1973 oil embargo so the country could never be held hostage at the pump again. On February 28, 2026, Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz and the White House authorized the largest emergency release ever attempted: 172 million barrels. The reserve has been draining ever since, and in August 2026 it fell below 300 million barrels for the first time since 1983.
This site tracks the drain with official government numbers. Every figure comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Weekly Petroleum Status Report, published each Wednesday. We update the site by hand when the report lands. No models, no sources you can't check.
This is the entire history of the SPR, from its early fill in the 1980s to today. Every previous emergency shows up as a barely visible dent: Desert Storm in 1991, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Libya disruption in 2011. The 2022 Ukraine-war release was the first structural cliff. The 2026 Hormuz release is the second, and it started from half the altitude. The dashed red line is the countdown made visible: the last four weeks' average draw, extended in a straight line until the reserve hits zero. It is shallower than the cliff itself because the crisis-peak drain of early spring has eased; if that pace ever resumed, the dry date would move roughly a year closer.
million barrels · weekly · dashed red = dry-date projection · source: EIA series WCSSTUS1
Eighteen months of weekly data. Through 2025 the reserve was actually being slowly refilled: that is the flat shelf around 400 million barrels. The Hormuz closure ends the plateau overnight: within weeks the SPR was releasing at rates approaching its physical maximum, and it has now lost roughly 117 million barrels in five months.
million barrels · weekly
Each bar is one week's change. Red bars are withdrawals. At the peak of the crisis the reserve was losing nearly 10 million barrels a week. The pace has eased since, but it has not stopped. One build-week since March is not a refill program. The dry-date countdown at the top of this page is driven by the average of the four most recent bars.
million barrels per week · red = draw, white = build
One honest caveat, in white and red. Commercial crude inventories, the oil that refiners and traders hold privately, are near normal levels. Gas stations are not about to run dry tomorrow. What is draining is the strategic buffer: the oil the government keeps for the next crisis. For the first time in the modern era, private industry now holds more crude than the United States government does. The next emergency arrives with the cupboard already half empty.
million barrels · weekly
The dry date is calculated in one line: current SPR level ÷ average draw over the last four weekly reports, projected forward from the latest report date. Nothing more.