Post #3905128

Is that how the reserve works though? Here in Australia the reserve isn’t a bunch of big tanks owned by the government. Its a legislative mechanism requiring fuel retailers to hold a reserve. It wouldn’t make sense for the government to own or manage a reserve because it needs to be cycled constantly (petrol deteriorates quickly, diesel too but less so), and they’d need to replicate skills from the fuel industry. That being the case I don’t think there’s a big tank of fuel owned by the government. Edit: ok it seems I’m absolutely wrong about this. The federally-owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns at four sites along the coastline of the Gulf of America. The sheer size of the SPR (authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels) makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy. https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/opr/strategic-petroleum-reserve Sorry Americans. As an aside, I don’t understand how this works because it’s certainly true that fuel doesn’t last forever. Maybe you can store raw unprocessed oil indefinitely but not fuel.