The Oil Reserve Trump Promised to Refill Is Now Lower Than Biden Left It

In October 2025, with oil at $58 a barrel, Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its full 714 million barrels, and his energy secretary accused Joe Biden of recklessly draining the reserve for political purposes ^[1]. Ten months later, in August 2026, the reserve held 286.6 million barrels: the lowest since 1982, and below the level Biden left behind ^[2]. The plan behind that October declaration had been taking shape for months. Israel had already struck Iran's nuclear sites in June 2025 ^[3], and the administration was assembling an energy anchor built on physical custody of Venezuelan oil. In August 2025 Trump announced the reserve would be refilled with Venezuelan crude ^[4]. By January 2026, U.S. forces had captured Nicolás Maduro and Venezuela had rewritten its hydrocarbons law for the first time since 2007, cutting royalties from 30% to 15% and letting private firms operate fields and sell crude on their own ^[5]. Washington was negotiating a 100-year lease on 17 Venezuelan fields holding roughly 90 billion barrels of proven reserves ^[6]. All of it was built for a world of cheap oil. Six weeks before the United States joined the war, Goldman Sachs was forecasting a 2.3-million-barrel-a-day global surplus for 2026, with Brent averaging $56 ^[7]. The hedge assumed prices would stay low enough that refilling the reserve would be cheap and easy. Then the United States joined the war, and oil spiked to $126 a barrel ^[8]. Gasoline passed $4.50 a gallon. To hold pump prices down, the administration released 172 million barrels from the reserve ^[9].

The strategic national reserves, which I filled up, have been virtually drained in order to keep gasoline prices lower, just prior to the election. — Donald Trump

The release pushed the reserve to 286.6 million barrels, and toward a line the Government Accountability Office has drawn: below 250 million barrels, the salt caverns' pumps and walls can physically degrade ^[2]. The Venezuelan oil that was supposed to refill it can't arrive fast enough. Chevron's chief executive warned that production can't just flip a switch, and that current investment is probably not enough ^[10]. Congress has refused to fund purchases at $100-plus oil. So by May 2026 the administration was weighing whether to drill beneath U.S. military bases to refill the reserve, with the energy secretary calling the lack of development under oil-field bases crazy ^[11]. The same president who accused Biden of recklessly draining the reserve for political purposes is now weighing whether to drill under Air Force bases to refill a reserve he drained further than Biden ever did, through a war his administration chose to join.