> The reserve was designed to handle five full drawdowns over its lifespan. Instead, it has undergone dozens of cycles over 40 years.

It was not designed for American politics. This feels like a failure of applying realistic, knowable expectations.

> Energy Department spokesman Ben Dietderich told CNBC in a statement that assertions regarding cavern collapse were false. “The caverns are always full. All that changes is the ratio of oil and water that is filling them,” Dietderich said, asserting that the Trump administration was “responsibly managing the SPR as the critical national security asset it was designed to be.”

Translating from Politborospeak: they're acknowledging the caverns are collapsing, and they are running it into the ground without care for the future like every other "critical national security asset".

yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313444

not just damaged, damaged permanently, like everything else this administration is burning to the ground in our country and just making it someone else's problem to rebuild over the next CENTURY

Just going to leave this graph of reserves over time here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/US...

Wasn't this known for a while? The problem is that simply agitating the liquid already causes immense wear because these are natural caves selected for their potential as long-term storage, not active sources.

Not to mention that draining them reduces the quality of the remaining oil (much like how you never want to feed an engine from the bottom of a diesel tank).

It's also my understanding that the problem is not just the reserves being drained, let alone drained so much, but also how rapidly they were drained because that again makes things worse.