Following the historic drawdown of America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve by President Joe Biden in 2022, the process of refilling it continues with the Trump administration.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the process is not going as fast as hoped. He told CNBC in an interview segment the network posted that the process could take years. "We are refilling the reserve now, and we will continue to refill the reserve the whole time I'm in office."
Wright criticized Biden for using the reserve to counter rising fuel prices. "You know, that was just such an irresponsible action to drain that reserve so quickly for electoral reasons."
Thomson/Reuters reported the action was also in response to the Ukraine-Russia war. "In 2022, the administration of President Joe Biden announced a sale of 180 million barrels of oil over six months, the largest ever SPR sale, in an attempt to lower gasoline prices amid inflation spiking to 9.1% in June and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
The Biden administration began refilling the reserve in August 2024. Wright said the holding areas were damaged in the hasty 2022 drawdown.
"And in fact," he said, "it was drained so fast, it did some damage to the facilities. And so, right now, we only can fill two of the four major salt caverns we have, so we are doing repair work on the other two. We're slowly filling the other two, and I'm trying to get some funds through Congress that'll give us a longer-term runway to fill the strategic petroleum reserve at the fastest rate we can."