In underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, the U.S. government stores hundreds of millions of barrels worth of oil in case of energy shocks. Those reserves are now at their lowest levels in decades.
In May, President Trump said the U.S. would release up to 172 million barrels worth of that oil to help tamp down prices during one of the world’s worst energy disruptions. The war with Iran hinges in large part on control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil transited before the conflict.
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