![]() Trade restrictions on rare earth elements? Build a critical minerals reserve.īut before we build a whole new generation of reserves, let’s take a hard look at the ones we already have. Nuclear fuel supply? Establish a uranium reserve. Grid reliability? Subsidize coal and nuclear power. Concerned about grid resilience? Stockpile electric transformers. There may be perfectly rational reasons to close out storage of this ethereal element, but no one is asking the obvious question: why are we closing it? The Office of Management and Budget is also targeting the Northeast’s reserves of gasoline and diesel fuel, employing about as much analysis into their elimination as was put into their creation.Īll these unanswered questions have hardly dimmed policymakers’ attraction to stockpiling - at least in theory. The National Helium Reserve is shutting down, even as the Interior Department designates helium to be a critical mineral. Today, other reserves are in administrative peril. It was one that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, American energy’s premiere emergency response tool, proved almost entirely unable to address. energy sector, greater than the oil shortages of the 1970s. Thus passed the biggest crisis ever faced by the U.S. In all, the Energy Department bought merely 126,000 barrels - essentially, out of petty cash. ![]() But Congress declined to appropriate funds to support the administration’s proposal to purchase 77 million barrels. The SPR’s successful reverse exchanges provided a temporary home for some 23 million barrels, filling all but 7 million barrels of space on offer. Ultimately, the crisis abated as the Saudis and Russians came to a truce and the world’s oil producers cut production. This “decade of drawdown” is paired with the SPR’s life extension program, projected to cost $1.4 billion. In 2015, the Obama administration and Congress agreed to fund budget priorities by selling off massive amounts of stockpiled oil. At one point, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin even proposed spending $20 billion to buy oil, a sally that surely annoyed the Department of Energy. Empty space could be leased by the private sector, a policy innovation termed “reverse exchange.” Oil could be purchased and kept in the ground, though this was never formally proposed. It could simply buy oil and refill itself. The White House tasked the Department of Energy with a clear mission: save America’s “energy dominance” from ruin.ĭedicated staff developed imaginative plans to soak up extra barrels with the SPR. Prices collapsed and oil storage filled to the brim. Through the first half of 2020, Saudi Arabia and Russia waged an inopportune battle for market share. energy sector was awash in oil it couldn’t sell. None of these sites produce any energy they store and distribute it during an emergency.Īs Americans scrambled for masks and cleaning supplies last year, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve figured in an altogether different kind of crisis. Operated by the Department of Energy, the petroleum reserve is supplemented by two extremely small reserves of refined fuels. The grandest is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which comprises giant caverns along the Gulf Coast. The Interior Department is winding down the National Helium Reserve. The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska operates under a similar philosophy: companies actively produce oil from it, proving that more could be produced if we ever needed to.įinally, civilian agencies operate a handful of commodity reserves. This statute, most recently invoked to boost Covid-19 testing availability, allows it to shore up domestic suppliers for defense purposes. In this latter way, DOD wields powerful authority under the Defense Production Act of 1950. You can store food in your pantry, but you can also plant your own garden. The Defense Logistics Agency supervises the National Defense Stockpile, filled with various metals, including the “rare earth” elements so critical to weapons. Each service branch maintains its own prepositioned stocks of war materiel. ![]() ![]() Naturally, the Department of Defense is the king of storage. The National Veterinary Stockpile fulfills this function for livestock. The SNS and All-Hazards Emergency Caches contain a wide array of medical drugs and other supplies. Many of our existing reserves lack clear direction and face an uncertain future.įederal stockpiles essentially come in three flavors: medical, defense, and commodities. Now, as the pandemic and competition with great powers fuel proposals to construct additional stockpiles-and not simply of gloves and ventilators-it is worth taking stock of where we are. Among President Biden’s first acts was to order a “status and inventory” report from the Strategic National Stockpile, a once-quiet backwater of the public-health bureaucracy thrust into the spotlight amid last year’s acute shortages of medical supplies and equipment.
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