Crude oil held in the US’s strategic petroleum reserves has dipped to its lowest level in more than four decades, Al Jazeera reports.
Energy firms pulled 5.5 million barrels of crude from the reserve in the week ending June 26, reducing the total amount of oil to 325.7 million barrels — the lowest since May 1983, according to a report from the Energy Information Administration.
The US created its own strategic petroleum reserve in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo exposed Washington’s energy security vulnerabilities. It has the world’s largest reserve among countries that publicly report them, with a maximum capacity of about 720 million barrels.
