U.S. oil reserves only at 60% despite Trump's promise to refill them | Fortune Home In January 2025, the newly elected President Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency” during his inaugural address. His proposed remedy included a pledge to refill the country’s emergency petroleum reserves. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” Trump said. The president didn’t set a deadline for himself to do so—but in retrospect, an expedient one might have been useful. A little over a year after his declaration, the U.S. is heavily involved in a conflict in the Middle East that has left a hole in globally traded petroleum supply and caused U.S. gas prices to jump. And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a supply buffer designed to mitigate price shocks by stockpiling emergency stores of crude oil, remains nowhere near full.
Published: March 9, 2026 6:00 pm
Source: Fortune — Read original