An interesting fact to consider is that the US stockpile (the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) is reported as the total of sour (high sulfur) and sweet (low sulfur) crude oil. The sweet stock makes up about 1/3 of the reserve and hardly varies at all. This is because US refineries are virtually all configured for sour crude: due to a mistaken belief in the 1990s that sweet crude was running out, the industry bet the farm on sour crude refining, and if sour crude runs low, it's extremely economical to switch.
As a result, almost all the draw from the SPR is of sour crude (currently ~5 million barrels/week). However, you can't just use up all the reserve because as levels get lower brine must be pumped into the storage chambers to retain pumping pressure, and the more brine that is pumped, the more the output quality declines.
The weekly reports indicate a total in the SPR of about 300mbb, of which ~100 are sweet and 200 sour. But for the reasons above, output becomes unusable one the sour levels fall to ~140-150mbb, at which point there is almost certainly a severe diesel supply shock. At current drawdown rates, that would be sometime around October/November, right in the middle of harvest season when demand for diesel is highest.
There's more complexity to this than I want to type out in a HN comment, but not that much more. Draw your own conclusions.
I think the reserves have more complex dynamics. The law requires 250 million barrels to be kept but the pumping rate decreases as more is pumped. Also, there's various estimates that indicate that the storage areas will lose structural integrity and start to collapse at levels higher than 250M barrels. I'm not sure anyone really knows about the levels for sure and the best estimates are probably kept secret for security reasons.
> would be sometime around October/November, right in the middle of harvest season
Right in the middle of election season.
This is an interesting insight, as usable reserves < reported reserves the clocks in the model are optimistic
Isn't this the reason why they specifically targeted Venezuela, to get their oil?
> virtually all configured for sour crude
They have retooled them in the past 40 years for the actually accessible inputs and desired distillates.
Well that's also election time so the timing could not be better
Random internet person says something that nobody is talking about. Gemini says random internet person is exaggerating the severity on most points.
I guess I’ll wait and see if someone provides citations because this feels like a nothing burger.
Should have said 'extremely uneconomical to switch. Sorry for the confusion.