What DOE Reports Is Not What DOE Can Deliver

Big Hill is offline. West Hackberry is constrained. Bayou Choctaw is undeliverable in warm months. Bryan Mound is doing all the work, and Bryan Mound is the site with a documented H2S history.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve stood at 307.65 million barrels as of July 24, 2026, the lowest inventory reading since February 1983. Congress set 252.4 million barrels as the mandated reference floor in 42 U.S.C. §6241(h). The current release program will draw another 65 million barrels from the reserve before the year ends and cross the mandated line by roughly 9 million. What Wright actually draws from over that 65 million is disproportionately Bryan Mound, the site at Freeport, Texas that has produced every documented crude quality complaint in the reserve’s history.

The 252.4 mandate assumes those barrels are deliverable. They are not. Of the reserve’s current inventory, roughly 100 million barrels cannot be delivered at rate. Big Hill is offline for construction. West Hackberry runs at 58% of design. Bayou Choctaw is undeliverable in warm months. Vapor pressure constraints affect seven of the eight delivery streams. The mandated 252.4 million barrel reserve, when it exists at all, will consist of roughly 150 million functional barrels and 100 million barrels of stranded inventory.