September 2, 2026
Trump Says He Is Replenishing US Oil Reserve Depleted Under Biden, With Venezuelan Oil
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| Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images |
President Donald Trump announced plans to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) with Venezuelan oil after drawdowns tied to the war in Iran further depleted a reserve already nearly cut in half under the Biden administration.
Trump announced the “biggest oil deal in the world” on Friday, saying his administration had secured more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves in a deal with the country’s interim president, after having arrested its former dictator, Nicolás Maduro. Trump said the oil would be used to more than double the American oil reserves and help reduce future U.S. gas prices.
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Sunday, Trump doubled down, saying much of the oil would be used to refill the SPR, which he said former President Joe Biden had “virtually emptied.”
While the most recent drop in the SPR — which left the reserve at its lowest point in 40 years with under 300 million barrels as of May — followed Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz after Trump began striking the country, the reserve was greatly depleted by former President Joe Biden before a brief and gradual replenishing of the reserve ahead of the 2026 war.
Following the 1973 Arab oil embargo, 28 countries, including the U.S., committed to maintaining 90 days’ worth of net petroleum oil imports. The SPR was Congress’s solution to this commitment, with instructions to “severe energy supply interruption.”
Starting in 1977, the reserve rose quickly to 589 million barrels before plateauing through the 1990s. At the turn of the millennium, the SPR’s stock quickly grew to around 700 million barrels before leveling off again for nearly a decade. The SPR reached its all-time high in April 2011 at 726.5 million barrels.
For most of its history, the SPR saw only small drawdowns during periods of oil price instability. However, a gradual but sustained decline in late 2016 was followed by a significant drop-off in the reserve’s stocks after Biden took office in January 2021.
Between the beginning of the Biden administration and June 2023, the SPR fell from 637 million barrels to 347 million barrels.
The drop resulted from several factors, beginning with the release of 3.3 million barrels of oil in September 2021 following the devastation of Hurricane Ida. Another 50 million barrels were released in November that year to curb post-COVID gas prices ahead of the holiday season.
In March of 2024, Biden announced a 180-million-barrel emergency drawdown following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Compounding the depletion of the reserves, Congress — in a series of votes between 2015 and 2018 — moved to sell over 350 million barrels between Fiscal Year 2017 and Fiscal Year 2031. These drawdown authorizations were mostly used as a “spending offset” budgetary gimmick to buy down the total taxpayer cost of several major spending bills and tax cuts.
After being nearly cut in half in two years, efforts were taken to turn the tide. Biden’s Department of Energy began to restock the reserve as refineries returned borrowed crude oil with interest, and Congress officially canceled the future sale of about 140 million barrels.
Trump continued the gradual restoration of the SPR through the first year of his second term, making refilling the SPR a stated policy priority during his inaugural address.
At the time, the Department of Energy estimated that it would cost $20 billion over the next several years to return the SPR to near full capacity; however, if 65 billion barrels are to be received from the Venezuelan government, only 0.66 percent of that would be needed to replenish the SPR to its all-time high.
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“The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States,” Trump said in his Sunday announcement.
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