It was established to confront the "Arab oil weapon" the American strategic oil reserves were known

After the Arabs used oil as a weapon against America and the West during the Egyptian-Israeli war in 1973, the United States has been building a strategic oil stockpile, the largest in the world, to deal with emergency situations. What is the Arab oil weapon? How did America prepare to confront it?

In light of the crises afflicting the major global economies due to economic inflation, high prices of oil and its derivatives, in addition to the imbalance that afflicted global supply and supply chains, the US President is expected to announce the withdrawal of more than 35 million barrels of oil from the country’s strategic reserve in a move to tame oil prices and stimulate recovery Economic.

And on Monday, the American Bloomberg Agency quoted informed sources that President Joe Biden is preparing to announce the start of using oil from the country’s strategic reserves after the OPEC countries rejected American calls to increase production significantly, and explained that this announcement would be “in coordination with many countries.” Others” are oil-consuming, such as India, Japan, South Korea, and even China.

It is noteworthy that the United States began building the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo led to a rise in gasoline prices and damaged the American economy. Some US presidents also resorted to drawing from reserves to calm oil markets during times of war or when hurricanes caused disruption to the oil infrastructure along the US Gulf of Mexico coast.

Arab oil weapon

Historically, Muslims used oil as a weapon in its literal sense, as groups within the Umayyad and Abbasid armies were called “nafatt”, whose mission was to throw burning oil balls with catapults behind the walls of cities and castles that were besieging them in order to burn and destroy them.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, and in conjunction with the discovery of huge reserves of oil in the Arab and Gulf countries in particular, oil turned into a very important strategic crude that most industrial economies around the world depend on, which turned it into a strategic weapon in the hands of the producing and exporting countries of oil derivatives.

In the Arab-Israeli conflicts between 1948 and 1967, the Arabs tried to use weapons against Western countries more than once to force them to stop their aid and support for Israel, but the supplies coming from Iran and Venezuela at the time prevented it from achieving the desired results.

But the situation changed in the period between 1973 and 1974 when 6 oil countries within the “OPEC” decided to raise the price of oil by 70%, and Arab countries decided to ban the export of oil to the United States and Western countries supporting Israel in its war on Egypt in October of the same The year, which led to a quadrupling of oil prices by 1974 to about $12 per barrel in Western capitals and a sharp decline in stock market prices.

At the time when it was decided to use oil as a strategic weapon against certain countries in order to pressure them and force them to change their political and military positions towards a specific matter, the term “Arab oil weapon” was introduced and with it the journey of the United States and Western countries began to search for solutions to confront this weapon and reduce its danger to the world. The economy and industry in the future.

US strategic oil reserves

In the mid-seventies of the last century, and after the oil crisis that occurred during the October War, the United States decided to build a reserve stock of crude oil to mitigate future supply disruptions of oil derivatives to meet emergency situations.

The United States has the world's largest known emergency supply, with its ground storage tanks in Louisiana and Texas at 714 million barrels (113.5 million cubic metres).

As of September 4, the strategic oil stockpile in the United States amounted to about 621.3 million barrels (98.8 million cubic meters), equivalent to about 31 days of oil at the daily consumption levels of the United States for 2019 of 20.54 million barrels per day, or 65 days of oil. At the US daily import levels for 2019 of 9.141 million barrels per day.

However, the maximum total capacity to withdraw from the SPR is 4.4 million barrels (700,000 cubic meters) per day, so it will take about 145 days to fully use the reserve.

According to market prices last March ($58 a barrel), the value of the strategic petroleum reserve at that time amounted to more than $14.6 billion of sweet crude, and about $18.3 billion of high sulfur crude. While the total value of crude oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2012 amounted to about $43.5 billion, the price paid for oil was $20.1 billion (an average of $28.42 per barrel).