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The US emergency oil stash, known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, was designed to protect the market by offsetting oil supply shocks, but today it seems like the old pipes barely work.
Last year the roof on a 1970s-era storage tank collapsed and it still hasn't been fixed, Congress hasn’t approved its funding and corrosion tore through a pipe in April, Bloomberg reports.
Deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Petroleum Reserves Robert Corbin says it’s a complex infrastructure that will only see more problems as it continues to age.
The Republican-led Congress voted to start selling 124 million barrels in 2018, but before they can do that, the system needs to be repaired. In 2014, a test sale of 5 million barrels discovered bottlenecks in the system that seriously hinder the government’s ability to release oil. [Bloomberg]
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