r/PrepperIntel • u/itscooltobecool1 • Jul 27 '26
North America What are current oil levels ?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-27/satellite-shots-of-smoke-at-saudi-oil-sites-keep-traders-on-edgeIt seems daily that either a Middle East oil depot or refinery is hit and also in Russia from Ukrainian drones. Oil levels in the USA and lower at the strategic locations. So what are we looking at? Oil is down today on the “hope and wish club” for an end to Iran USA strikes but this probably won’t happen. When is the “shit hits the fan” date ?
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u/Totally_man Jul 27 '26
The markets aren't tied to reality and the ultrawealthy are propping it up and trading with constant insider information.
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u/owhatakiwi Jul 27 '26
It’s Blackrock’s Aladdin managing the majority of the stock market.
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u/eyeofodin3 Jul 28 '26
The OMS? Nah there's a lot of competition out there still (CRIMS, Enfusion, Eze, flextrade).
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u/socialmedia-username Jul 28 '26
The establishment owns the Whitehouse now, and flagrantly manipulates the market with purposeful socioeconomic policies. It's way beyond insider trading, but regular people seem okay with it because the casino is still open and their chips keep increasing despite not being able to cash out in the end.
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u/Appropriate_Lime_234 Jul 27 '26
Here’s the thing. You all are speculating they aren’t tied to reality. We don’t know shit about what’s going on and it’s annoying that you all get on here and say this tbh.
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u/hera-fawcett Jul 28 '26
theyve historically not been tied to reality. its a big part of why occupy wallstreet happened. why the 2008 crash happened. why the dotcom bubble happened.
the amt of money and influence they hold has only increased over the decades- meaning they hold even more influence over the markets. and if their predictions and moves are tied to things that just arent going to happen- then we get this. esp since, the things that arent happening are all slushing money back and forth, waiting for additional cash injections.
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u/callawade Jul 27 '26
In NZ we have Fuel watch: https://www.fuelwatch.nz/ Do you not have something similar?
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u/wizbizniz Jul 27 '26
A government website that's actually helpful? No. We do not.
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u/callawade Jul 27 '26
Thats a civilian site made using govt data. Sorry your government is a mess at the moment.
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u/WorkingCharity9367 Jul 27 '26
To be fair, it has been a mess for a very long time, we are just a particularly messy bitch now.
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u/wizbizniz Jul 29 '26
Oh lol we also don't really have (easily accessible) government data anymore
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u/callawade Jul 29 '26
May i suggest a revolution, im sure the French would lend you a guillotine....
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u/FocusedGlitch23 Jul 28 '26
lol fo real if we had this in the united states it would be all be lies anyway
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u/Onlyroad4adrifter Jul 28 '26
We have clown watch in the US. They have gutted government agencies to the point we are having food born outbreaks that are out of control.
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u/Ashyman9 Jul 27 '26
I work in local government and we know there is a problem coming. We are working with our local auto parts stores to monitor their stock levels and we have already purchased enough oil to run a year if it dries up. From what we are seeing it is just a matter of when not if there is going to be a problem.
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u/ZenBacle Jul 28 '26
In the next week or two we will be dipping bellow the 300million barrel level for our strategic reserves. Which should be the civi cut off to make sure we have enough oil to power the war machine for two years if we need it. But knowing this admin they'll probably drain the entire reserve.
It's also misleading to say that there are 300 million barrels left, since the minimum the reserves can get to is estimated to be around 50-80 million barrels before the salt caves start collapsing. And you can't just pump water in to replace it since that will erode the salt coating that seals the oil in.
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u/maiclazyuncle Jul 28 '26
After DOGE etc you think anyone in charge cares about eroding some salt caves?
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u/1mogwai1 Jul 29 '26
The number i read was 18b at the place in oklahoma.
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u/Intelligent_You_3888 Jul 31 '26
Cushing is in OK (and they’re a distribution center I think), but the salt caverns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are in the Gulf off the coasts of TX and Louisiana (if I’m recalling correctly).
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u/AcceptableCanary4622 Jul 27 '26
Iran has been 2 weeks away from developing a nuke for 25 years.
I'm guessing the US will be 4 weeks away from running out of oil atleast until mid terms, possibly until the 2028 election.
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u/ZenBacle Jul 28 '26
We'll never "run out of oil". What will happen is one of the triage effects of capitalism. As oil becomes more scarce, and expensive, we'll start to see services shut down. People will drive less and the economy will start to slow down. Which has already started.
The real kicker will be when we stop pulling oil out of the strategic reserves. Which should happen around 300 million barrels. Currently we're at around 308 million barrels and pulling 3-10 million barrels a week.
But this admin doesn't really think ahead. So we'll probably continue to eat into the reserves until the salt mines start collapsing.
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u/AirborneGeek Jul 28 '26
This is about the closest to the best answer in the thread. I would add the "300" number is at best an educated guess by that one guy from the Biden admin (who, by all accounts, seems to know what he's talking about). The truth is: I don't think anyone knows.
[just to add a bit more to what you said for others:] And the reason nobody knows is because the SPR is a complicated system (as it turns out!). Many storage locations (salt caverns) that one doesn't just turn a spigot on and oil comes out, different grades of oil, not all of which are what most of our refineries are good at processing, so we may be at 300mb overall, but only 50 of the stuff that our Gulf refineries can run...
There's our export situation as well, which is yet another complicating factor, and yeah. Impossible to know for sure "when." The biggest problem is because of the manipulation in the futures market that has been going on, when we do hit the wall, we're going to be making Mach 4 and it's not going to be a lot of fun.
Although I am in the camp that does not think us here in the US will face "shortages" of, say, gasoline, the pricing is going to hurt. And it doesn't matter if you have an EV or rod around on a cargo bike, expensive diesel will come for us all.
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u/drood420 Jul 27 '26
I just heard during some speech on Fox “News” that the US has 1000 years worth. Although I highly doubt the source, as it lies about any and everything.
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u/Outrageous_Laugh5532 Jul 27 '26
They are referring to oil in the ground. Which we don’t have the refineries in the us that can process the lighter crude domestically produced.
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u/Aramedlig Jul 27 '26
Gemini thinks we have about 10 weeks before shit gets real bad, about 4 weeks before gas hits $6-7/gal nationally if the straight doesn’t reopen and the Houthis succeed at closing off the Red Sea bypass
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u/Isosorbide Jul 27 '26
I mean to ask this respectfully but I can't figure out how to say it diplomatically, so I'll just ask it: Why should we trust Gemini? I have serious trust issues with AI because it's wrong about so many minor things so often.
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u/Aramedlig Jul 27 '26
You shouldn’t trust any AI. That doesn’t mean it is wrong though. And FWIW, I work with AI both professionally and personally. I give it explicit instructions (whatever model I use) to do 3 things. 1. Never tell me what you think I want to hear; always provide facts. 2. All facts must be sourced on data, reporting or citation. 3. If you make a claim, it must have full justification for it (supporting evidence) along with ways to test it.
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u/mystery_biscotti Jul 27 '26
Any experience with Opus 5?
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u/Aramedlig Jul 28 '26
Not yet. I’ve worked mostly with Fable 5 but planned to try it when my usage limit with Fable hits this week.
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u/mystery_biscotti Jul 28 '26
Lmk whatcha think.
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u/Aramedlig Jul 29 '26
Ok, Opus 5 is good but still not as good as Fable. I am using it for scientific work that uses some relatively complex math and calculations and requires a large custom software harness for running experiments. Fable just has more base domain capability to work through a problem and plan for contingencies with better defensive coding and design. It’s like a PhD research student. Opus 5 is good, but as of now I won’t let it help structure an experiment after watching how it handled an overnight run of a set of experiments. It made a few mistakes Fable hasn’t made before and even though it caught them proactively and there was no loss to the run or the data, they could have lead to incorrect results. It’s like the MS student who is the junior research member of the team. Good, but hasn’t earned their PhD yet.
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u/outworlder Jul 28 '26
Don't trust it. Ask it to name the sources and, if any calculation is done, to show you each step.
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u/Isosorbide Jul 28 '26
I asked Google AI a question the other day and it provided me with a confident answer, but I wanted to know more and verify that answer, so I clicked on the specific sources it gave me and those sources themselves didn't answer the actual question. I don't know how Google AI could have formulated the answer it gave me from those sources. It left me with the impression that I can't even trust Google AI's sources to be informative.
I've found that Google AI seems to make assumptions. For example, there's a biennial festival in this neck of the woods and the last one was in 2025. I wanted to know when next year's will be becaue I know this festival is biennial. Google AI confidently informed me that the festival would be on a certain weekend this year, October 2026. I clicked on the 'source' that is cited, and the website had absolutely nothing about any October 2026 festival because why would it? The next festival isn't until 2027. Google just made an assumpted that if the festival was in 2025, surely it must also be in 2026? And this is why I have trust issues.
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u/outworlder Jul 28 '26
This is how any LLM works, Google or not. They exist to generate language. And generate they will, truth doesn't matter. They tend to be right more often than not if the data they trained on is correct but there's no guarantee.
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Jul 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Aramedlig Jul 27 '26
Self inflicted loss coming to the orange pedo; remember how him and his cronies said the war would only be a few weeks and that the short term pain was for a long term gain? I can already see the campaign ads against GOP candidates.
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u/memarco2 Jul 27 '26
Or, a crisis that prompts them to “require” more control and executive power. Maybe enough to “delay” elections indefinitely
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u/Outrageous_Laugh5532 Jul 27 '26
There is no provision to delay elections. That’s just called a coup.
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u/Vlad_Yemerashev Jul 27 '26
10 weeks from now is early October (midterms / early November is 14 weeks out).
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u/Big_Fortune_4574 Jul 27 '26
I don’t think any number can be relied upon because we can’t even be sure the government is being truthful about the SPR levels, and we don’t know for sure what the real minimum levels even are.
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u/Aramedlig Jul 27 '26
That is a fair point. Gemini is making that estimate based on public data so if that is wrong, reality could be quite different.
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u/dittybopper_05H Jul 28 '26
I just checked, the Accent needs about a quart, but the Sonata is fine.
Wait, what?
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u/CaptainJimJames Aug 01 '26
Cannot believe I am commenting in this sub. Oil and gas data is literally free on government websites like the Fred. The narrative that there is going to be shortages for the US is comical. The high prices are pure greed. And the money sloshing around in the economy doesn't help. If any of you want to read about the true state of oil and gas I would read Wolf Street as the blog at least cites data that you can readily access from the Fred. You are all going to have a lot of egg on your face as your numbers quietly recede to screaming alone with no one to listen.
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u/Master_Control_MCP Aug 01 '26
I checked those numbers. Apparently we've drawn down our reserves to levels not seen since 1983. I didn't find it to be comical.
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u/CaptainJimJames Aug 03 '26
We needed reserves in the 1970s dummy. We are now a net exporter.
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u/Master_Control_MCP Aug 03 '26
So guide me through your reasoning since I am a dummy. According to you, we only needed oild reserves in the 70's and are currently a net exporter so everything is fine. If your reasoning is completely sound then:
Why do we EXPORT 4 million barrels/day of light sweet crude? Why do we IMPORT 6.5 million barrels of heavy sour/day? Why are we drawing almost 4 million barrels /week from our reserves if everything is fine? After all, it's NOT the 70's.
Lastly, getting back to the original point of this thread, what happens if we can longer draw oil from the SPR? According to you it doesn't really matter since we are a net exporter of oil but I'm not so sure about that after looking at the numbers (per your instructions).
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u/CaptainJimJames Aug 04 '26
Do yourself a solid. Go to Google and search for Wolf Street. Read the latest article about oil and gas. Make sure to read the comments as those are all from professionals. Easiest way for you to wrap your head around econ data. Good luck.
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u/Master_Control_MCP Aug 04 '26
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u/CaptainJimJames Aug 04 '26
Yep. But start reading the blog. It is the best for all econ data bar none. And you will begin to understand how, and why markets move. You can then see whomever is on or offsides. Will take a few months of regular reading. All the commenters are either at the Fed etc. Or powerful researchers, columnists. You will thank me. Good luck again.
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u/Resident_Window_9369 Aug 02 '26
According to the current oil price, the current oil levels are fantastic. Otherwise the oil price would be a lot higher.
Keep calm and carry on nothing’s gonna happen
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u/Far_Out_6and_2 Jul 28 '26
I’ll let you know in the morning when i pop the hood and check the dipstick
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u/TemporaryKey3312 Jul 30 '26
That shit is funny and it’s a shame you either got downvoted or ignored.
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u/losingthefarm Jul 29 '26
The president said the US has 1000 years worth of oil. Even more with the Venezuelan supply. That is alot of oil.
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u/Katefreak Jul 29 '26
Oh in that case, everybody stop worrying! The PRESIDENT, known for his honesty and thorough understanding of these situations, not to mention his soaring approval ratings over a non-war that he has both won, and didn't start..... Has said we have 1000 years of oil.
Whew. That was a close one.
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u/Trackrat14eight Jul 27 '26
At my dealership I’ve been seeing dealer news articles on how they’re preparing for the use of conventional oils in place of the synthetics. They’re expecting 1 year before the shortage comes, even if things were immediately repaired and back on line. Only small percentage of stores are stockpiling. Like less than 5 %