US Crude Oil Reserves Register Uptick

The price of oil has fallen over 12 percent over the course of the week since Trump announced his tariffs.

A part of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System runs through boreal forest past Alaska Range mountains near Delta Junction, Alaska, on May 5, 2023. Mario Tama/Getty Images

U.S. domestic crude oil inventories have posted a weekly increase of 2.6 million barrels as commodity prices remained volatile with the new trade tariffs being imposed by the Trump administration.

“U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 2.6 million barrels from the previous week,” according to the April 9 report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The data given is for the week ending April 4.

There were approximately 442.3 million barrels of inventory, which is about 5 percent lower than the five-year average for this time of year, said the report.

As for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, there were about 396.7 million barrels of crude oil, as of the latest data on April 4. This is an increase of nearly 9 percent from 2024, but a far cry from the 638.1 million barrels of reserve when the Biden administration took office in 2021.

An inventory buildup can signify many things. Besides the effort taken by the federal government to bolster petroleum reserves, an increase in crude oil can signal a jump in overall production of the commodity—an oversupply—or even lower overall usage, that is, people using less fuel due to a decline in demand or lower economic output.

According to the EIA report, crude oil refinery inputs in the United States have gone up weekly by 69,000 barrels per day. There were an average of 15.6 million barrels of inputs for the latest week, with refineries operating at 86.7 percent of their operable capacity.

President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements have been felt in the oil market, with the benchmark WTI Crude falling 12 percent from $71.71 on April 2 to $62.48 on April 9, after the low of 59.58 on April 8.

On April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause of global tariffs, except for China. The Chinese communist regime was not given relief for the tariffs because of its retaliatory actions against U.S. goods.

Based on the initial announcements, global investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs predicted a deep dive for oil prices, forecasting WTI trading at $58 by December 2025.

However, since Trump has paused his non-China reciprocal tariffs for now, and is currently negotiating with countries on trade deals, it remains to be seen whether the prediction will come true.

Trump has also initiated a drive for increasing U.S. domestic oil production.

Drilling in Alaska

On his first day in office, Trump ordered to “immediately reverse the punitive restrictions implemented by the previous administration that specifically target resource development on both State and Federal lands in Alaska.”

According to the presidential action issued on Jan. 20, Trump said developing Alaska’s resources can reduce prices for Americans, create jobs, ameliorate trade imbalances, and exert energy dominance in the global sphere.

He has ordered the expedited leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska, along with developing the state’s liquified natural gas potential.

Following Trump’s orders, the U.S. Department of Interior said in a March 20 statement that it is seeking to reopen up to 82 percent of the approximately 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska for leasing to expand energy development opportunities.

Along with this, the department is reinstating a program that makes the entire 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge available for oil and gas leasing.

According to EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook report published in March, the agency expects global oil markets to remain tight through the middle of 2025 before building on inventories by the end of the year.

The decrease in oil production is attributed to lower output from Iran and Venezuela.

“We expect oil inventories will build and place downward pressure on crude oil prices in late-2025 and through 2026 when we expect OPEC+ unwinds production cuts and non-OPEC oil production grows. As a result, we forecast the Brent crude oil price will fall to an average of $68/b in 2026,” the EIA report read.