President Donald Trump on Feb. 20. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
March 11, 2026 5:00 PM, EDT
President Donald Trump indicated he would tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help ease oil prices that have soared amid the war with Iran.
“We’ll do that — and then we’ll fit it up,” Trump said March 11 in an interview with local television station WKRC during a visit to the Cincinnati area. “I filled it up once, and I’ll fill it up again. Right now we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down.”
Earlier March 11, the International Energy Agency agreed to discharge 400 million barrels from emergency oil reserves, its largest-ever release, as governments seek to contain a price spike driven by the Middle East war.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains about 415 million barrels, little more than half its capacity, following a series of drawdowns by the Biden administration. Those included a record sale of 180 million barrels to help lower gasoline prices after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Trump didn’t specify in the interview how much oil he would release from the reserve.
Trump is facing political pressure to address rising fuel prices that have been driven up by the spike in oil. November’s midterm elections will hinge in large part on Americans’ attitudes toward the cost of living, and the polls show the public giving the president poor marks for his handling of the economy.
Trump has vowed to refill the reserve. It was created after the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s in salt caverns across the U.S. Gulf Coast. It has a maximum capacity of about 713.5 million barrels.
On paper, the reserve has the capacity to release about 4.4 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Department’s website. It takes 13 days for oil from the system to reach the open market after the president orders a sale.
However, an analysis prepared by the Energy Department in 2016 said the actual amount the reserve is capable of releasing may be limited to 1.4 million barrels to 2.1 million barrels per day. During the 2022 release following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the amount never topped more than 1.1 million barrels a day, according to an analysis of Energy Information Administration data by ClearView Energy Partners.
