Factors influencing the size of the U. S. strategic petroleum reserve
Chapters are devoted to: development of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), its cost, and status of funding; analyses and other data supporting the SPR size; other measures available to meet oil-supply interruptions; the international energy problem; and emergency petroleum reserve programs in other countries. It was found that determining the optimal SPR size is extremely difficult because of the many unknowns, assumptions, variables, and political factors which must be considered, and because there is no realistic way to assign quantitative probabilities to possible supply interruptions. Nevertheless, in considering requests to fully fund the billion-barrel reserve, the Congress might be guided by the following factors. No study has shown how large the optimally sized SPR should be. The June 1978 amended plan and subsequent DOE analysis, although not designed to determine an optimally sized reserve, do project a range of supply interruptions that would require a billion-barrel SPR. The probability of a future supply disruption of the size and duration necessary to require a billion-barrel SPR is rated low in the DOE supply-interruption assessment. Recent analyses done by DOE indicate that the largest potential supply shortfalls under selected disruption situations are considerably less than projections made at the time the amended plan was prepared. The one billion barrel SPR is sized to meet a supply disruption of far greater severity than ever experienced. Serious implementation problems and large cost increases have been experienced that were not anticipated at the time the billion-barrel decision was made.
- Research Organization:
- General Accounting Office (GAO), Washington, DC (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 6243429
- Report Number(s):
- ID-79-8
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General of the United States
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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