US DOE awards first SPR contracts of Trump administration

The US Department of Energy closed its first crude purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, awarding contracts for approximately 1 million barrels, it announced Nov. 12.

The contracts were awarded after a bid solicitation process that began Oct. 21. In a news release, DOE said it received 18 offers from six companies and "awarded contracts to the most competitive bids that met all quality and specification requirements." Deliveries will be received December 2025 and January 2026 at the Bryan Mound storage site in Texas.

"President Trump promised to protect America's energy security by refilling and managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve more responsibly," US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement. "Awarding these contracts marks another step in the important process of refilling this national security asset."

For the time since the law's passage, DOE will begin to use funds appropriated through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Republicans' 2025 budget reconciliation legislation, which designated $171 million for SPR refills.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, the SPR contained 409.6 million barrels in the week ending Oct. 31. When former US President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the SPR held 638 million barrels out of a maximum capacity of 714 million.

In 2022, Biden's DOE released 180 million barrels to combat price spikes in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Republicans frequently accused Democrats of sacrificing energy security to avoid political blowback in advance of the 2022 midterms, and Trump regularly accused Biden of making "practically empty" a reserve Trump had previously "topped out."

"While this process won't be complete overnight, these actions are an important step in strengthening our energy security and reversing the costly and irresponsible energy policies of the last administration," Wright said Nov. 12.

In May, Wright testified before a House appropriations subcommittee that it would take around $20 billion in eventual funding to fully refill the reserve.

Adding barrels is also more logistically challenging than releasing them. According to an S&P Global Energy analysis, even a fully funded SPR refill effort, made at the fastest possible speed of 4 million barrels per month, would stretch until 2031 -- a forecast that assumed Congress would cancel currently planned sales.