Transportation Planning for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Should Be Improved

To minimize the vulnerability of the United States to the effects of a severe energy-supply interruption and to provide limited protection from the short-term consequences of interruptions in supplies of petroleum products, Congress provided for the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for the storage of petroleum products. The current goal is to have 1 billion barrels of crude oil in storage by the end of 1985 and 500 million barrels by the end of 1980. On July 31, 1978, there were 35 million barrels of crude oil in storage. The Department of Energy (DOE) has the responsibility for developing a comprehensive plan for transporting the crude oil.