During times of emergency releases, what type of oil is most frequently requested by industry?
Sweet crude is most frequently requested. Sweet crude will always have the highest demand in a supply emergency because of its value to refiners to produce transportation fuels. Sweet crudes can be refined by all refineries from the simplest to most complex. To illustrate, the Hurricane Katrina emergency sale resulted in 10.8 million barrels of sweet crude sold versus 200 thousand barrels of sour. Question: Why is only crude oil stored in the Reserve? Answer: The SPR is authorized by law to store both refined products and crude oil. However, in preparing the 1977 SPR Plan for development of the Reserve, an analysis of the U.S. refining industry indicated that the industry was robust and had the refining capacity to satisfy the major portion of the nation’s demand for petroleum products. This continues to be true today–30 years later. The U.S. petroleum import dependency is overwhelmingly crude oil, not refined products. In addition, crude oil, is cheaper to acquire, store and transpor
