LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration recently announced that it would release 172 million barrels of oil from the country's strategic petroleum reserve. It's part of a coordinated effort with 32 countries to lower oil prices that spiked because of the war in Iran. Two of the U.S.'s four reserve sites are in Texas. Houston Public Media's Natalie Weber reports on why the oil is stored there.
ELESTER ANDREWS: Do you feel anything yet?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I don't have a pole.
NATALIE WEBER, BYLINE: Elester Andrews is fishing with his grandson at a river about an hour south of Houston. He drives down from the city to fish here about twice a month and says he had no idea that a site just down the road is used to store part of the nation's oil reserve.
ANDREWS: I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to it. I don't ever just see anybody other than parked cars, stuff like that.
WEBER: The reserve is in Freeport, Texas, near where Andrews likes to fish. A large SUV with a security guard inside blocks the entrance to this particular reserve. It's surrounded by a tall fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. The oil here and at other reserve sites is stored in large, underground salt caverns.
RAMANAN KRISHNAMOORTI: Salt is a great way to contain things because oil does not flow past the salt.
WEBER: That's Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Houston. Krishnamoorti says the reserve is located along the Gulf Coast in part because of these naturally occurring salt caverns across Louisiana and east Texas. And, he says, the sites are close to many refineries. Texas is home to a third of the nation's crude oil refining capacity. The reserve locations are also close to Texas oil fields, Krishnamoorti says.
KRISHNAMOORTI: So you can take that oil, and without necessarily having to move it very large distances, you can actually end up storing it, and then as needed, pump it out and send it to the refineries to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel.
WEBER: U.S. President Gerald Ford founded the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 after the U.S. faced an oil embargo from Arab countries, leading to a recession. Currently, the reserve stores 415 million barrels, or about 57% of its total capacity. That's enough to sustain U.S. consumption for about 20 days. Robert Weiner is an international business professor at George Washington University. He says releasing oil from the reserve is unlikely to have a long-term impact on prices.
ROBERT WEINER: In the longer run, there is no substitute for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
WEBER: Skip York is an energy expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. He agrees that the release of oil from the reserve is unlikely to dramatically decrease prices anytime soon.
SKIP YORK: They're really hoping to do is to temper the increase or to try to put a ceiling on prices.
WEBER: Back at the fishing spot in Freeport near one of the reserve sites, Elester Andrews says he's been feeling the crunch of rising gas prices. The 79-year-old says it costs about $60 right now to completely fill the silver Chevy Colorado pickup truck he's been driving for about a decade.
ANDREWS: That's when you really feel the pinch. But, you know, it's just a psychological thing for me.
WEBER: For now, he's taken to filling up his gas tank whenever it reaches half empty.
For NPR News, I'm Natalie Weber in Houston. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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