WASHINGTON, September 12 — A bipartisan push to overhaul the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now sitting before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where lawmakers are weighing whether the nation’s emergency oil stockpile is still built for the threats it was designed to counter. Rep. August Pfluger, a Texas Republican, introduced the 21st Century Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act, H.R. 10262, on Sept. 3 alongside bill sponsor Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, a Texas Democrat. Both sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which now holds the measure.
The bill does not itself rebuild anything. It calls for an analysis of how to improve and modernize the physical infrastructure and operation of the reserve so it can respond to petroleum product supply shocks.
The Case From Pfluger
“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was built to protect America from energy supply disruptions and national security threats, but nearly 50 years later, we’re still operating without a concrete plan for its future,” Pfluger said in a statement. He added that the country cannot afford to ignore the issue “as our adversaries are quietly building up their energy reserves.” Pfluger framed the legislation as a first step rather than a fix.
“This legislation is a straightforward step to get the answers we need and start modernizing the SPR for the challenges of today, not decades ago,” he said. The reserve stores crude oil in underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana.
It has long served as Washington’s tool for stabilizing prices when global oil supplies are disrupted — the insurance policy, in his staff’s telling, that America has carried for nearly half a century. That same staff assessment warns the infrastructure is aging and now constitutes a national security concern.
What the Watchdog Found
A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that Congress and the Department of Energy still lack a unified long-term plan for the reserve. That includes no target size for the stockpile and no clear strategy for maintaining its aging infrastructure. If enacted, the measure would direct the Department of Energy to request that the National Petroleum Council — an advisory committee to the Energy Secretary — deliver a public report within one year.
The bill text lays out what that report would examine. Among the items: opportunities tied to expanding the geographic distribution of the reserve to include storage of refined petroleum products; eliminating congressionally mandated sales of petroleum products from the reserve; and creating storage facilities sufficiently resilient to withstand drawdowns of the volume and frequency required over the last decade of the reserve’s use.
That last provision speaks to a hard reality. The reserve has been tapped repeatedly in recent years, and the question of whether its caverns and surface equipment can keep absorbing that pace is precisely what the GAO flagged as unanswered. The broader stakes are strategic.
Energy reserves are leverage, and Pfluger’s warning about adversaries building up their own stockpiles places the SPR debate inside a larger contest over who can weather a supply shock — and who cannot. A reserve without a stated target size or a maintenance plan is a reserve whose reliability is assumed rather than assured.
For now, the bill remains pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Whether it advances, and whether the National Petroleum Council study it envisions ever lands on the Energy Secretary’s desk, is the next thing to watch.
