The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: U.S. Energy Security and Oil Politics, 1975–2005 (review)

In response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, U.S. policymakers initiated several programs to address America’s energy problems. Policies that evoked demand restraints, price controls, and the development of alternative fuels, however, ultimately failed to achieve the national goal of import protection. One program did succeed: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Bruce A. Beaubouef’s new book describes the history of the SPR, its design and technological capacity, and its impact on U.S. oil security and policy. Beaubouef argues that the SPR became the federal government’s primary energy policy tool, and that its long-term success can be attributed to the fact that the program did not alter America’s traditional patterns of consumption.

In the wake of the Arab oil embargo, Congress created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 to buy and store crude oil to use in the event of a national emergency. Underground salt domes along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast provided the storage facilities for the massive petroleum stockpile. Moreover, the region proved to be ideal because of its access to pipelines, marine docking facilities, and refineries. Through a gradual process of solution mining (“leaching”) salt domes, the Department of Energy created storage caverns 200 feet in diameter and 2,000 feet high, each large enough to hold more than ten million barrels of oil.

The SPR encountered expensive setbacks in its early stages. Bureaucratic delays, management issues, scheduling conflicts, environmental and local concerns, and structural problems associated with the storage caverns led to massive cost overruns. The fear of an impending oil shortage, Beaubouef explains, justified the priority to “get oil in the ground” (p. 65) quickly at the expense of proper planning, management efficiency, and budgetary concerns. Nevertheless, by the early 1980s the SPR had become an effective policy tool for combating a major oil crisis with a stockpile of more than 400 million barrels of oil.

The SPR’s first major test came in January 1991 on the heels of the Persian Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush ordered the first drawdown of SPR oil, about 33 million barrels. Within three weeks the first shipments of SPR oil began flowing to refineries in Texas. Over time the SPR became a multipurpose policy tool: selling oil to generate revenue, leasing crude to oil companies, and releasing reserves in the wake of Gulf Coast hurricanes, such as Lili (2002) and Katrina (2005).

Beaubouef’s work offers useful insights into U.S. energy policy since the 1970s. He contends that the SPR, in addition to other nations’ stockpiling programs within the International Energy Association (IEA), has effectively eliminated OPEC’s use of the “oil weapon” (p. 220). But the broader legacy of the SPR is that it has provided a safety net for energy consumers in the wake of supply disruptions, oil-price spikes, and natural disasters.

Questions do arise about the impact of the SPR on the global oil market and on the regional economy. How did the enormous purchases of cheaper-priced oil from Mexico and North Sea producers, for example, affect the world market in the early 1980s, particularly among OPEC members such as Nigeria? How large was the impact of the SPR on the local economies in Texas and Louisiana? Beaubouef does well to include some of the politicians and administrators involved in the program, but he misses the opportunity to capture the voices of those who actually built and operated the facilities, such as local workers.

This comprehensive history of the SPR makes an important contribution to our understanding of the U.S. response to the energy crisis while also pointing the way to further examination of energy policies and energy technologies of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Synthetic Fuels Corporation and the federal alcohol fuel (ethanol) program. Beaubouef’s book fills a substantial gap in the literature on energy policy...