The first week of Joe Biden’s term in 2021, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve had had 638 million barrels of oil. The first week of President Trump’s second term in 2025, the SPR had 396 million barrels of oil.

As of August 21, it has 289 million barrels of oil. This is the lowest the reserve has been since 1982.

In 2025, the United States consumed an average of about 20.6 million barrels of petroleum per day.

Sunday morning, President Trump posted on Truth Social:

One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The “topping out” process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States. Thank you! President DONALD J. TRUMP

One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The “topping out” process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States. Thank you! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The “topping out process” will not begin “very shortly,” for a variety of reasons.

For starters, while Venezuela has oodles of proven reserves, the country’s poorly managed and aging extraction equipment mean it produces significantly less oil than you might expect. From the U.S. Energy Information Association: “Venezuela had the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves in 2023 with approximately 303 billion barrels accounting for approximately 17 percent of global reserves. Despite the sizeable reserves, Venezuela produced 0.8 percent of total global crude oil in 2023.” That’s not eight percent, that’s eight tenths of one percent.

The good news is that in the past........

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