Keeping fuel prices low is a political priority for US President Donald Trump. Just don’t bet on him gambling with America’s emergency oil stocks to achieve a second term in office, at the risk of jeopardizing energy security for the world’s largest economy.
Created in the early 1970s, soon after the oil shock caused by OPEC’s disastrous response to the Yom Kippur war, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) remains arguably America’s most important economic buffer. Ironically, the first oil pumped into the giant salt caverns acquired by the US government was shipped from Saudi Arabia.
