In its recent 2018 budget, the Trump Administration included a huge energy announcement. While it went mostly under the radar, the budget included a proposal to sell half of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for some extra revenue. Now, the SPR was originally established by Congress in 1975 after the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo wreaked havoc on America’s fuel supply. It was designed to hold up to 729 million barrels of crude oil, and as of mid-May the SPR’s underground locations in Texas and Louisiana held about 688 million barrels. Selling 350 million or so of those barrels, as proposed, would save some $16.6 billion… But there’s a downside to it, too. A few years ago, I was called on to make an external value assessment of the storage volume contained in the SPR. In that report, I identified another crucial advantage to the SPR system. An advantage […]