The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is many things to different people. To some, it’s an insurance policy. To others, a costly white elephant. Still others think of it as a shiny fire engine that’s too nice to actually take to a fire, and it has sat largely idle these four decades. In the early years of its existence, much of the debate centered on the Defense Department’s insistence that the SPR was needed in the case of a major war in Europe, when submarines would be sinking oil tankers left and right, as in World Wars I and II. The military saw the SPR as the ultimate fuel depot for use in a major war. (I can’t seem to recall who they thought the enemy would be, maybe Macedonia? Montenegro? One of those powerhouses.) To date, there have been only minor releases from the SPR, many just to raise money […]