How those enormous stockpile of oil in secure caverns and tankers help ?
America’s Gulf Coast holds nearly 700 million barrels of crude oil buried underground across four secure sites. United States’ massive “Strategic Petroleum Reserve” (SPR) lies in 60 subterranean caverns. They are strategically located, by carving into rock salt beneath the surface.
why would anyone want to bury oil back into the ground in the first place?
- Energy crisis of 1973 triggered by Arab oil exporters who had cut off the West from their supplies.
- The world was so dependent on oil from the Middle East that prices skyrocketed and petrol was soon being rationed at US filling stations.
- A couple of years later, the US began building its SPR, filling caverns full of crude oil.
- The salt domes is impervious to the crude oil, there’s no mixing, no breaking down, so it’s a great storage facility.
- Sonar images of the caverns gives you a three-dimensional way of looking at them. -cobin
America has effectively used the SPR to help get it out of hard times like…
- During the first Gulf War in which oil distribution in the Middle East was disrupted.
- During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when requests for emergency oil were received and approved within 24 hours of the storm making landfall.
As governments and energy bodies continue planning for the worst, oil stockpiles only look set to get bigger and bigger. It’s obvious that the US and many other countries believe their SPRs are a good investment.
