No, Former President Trump Did Not Fill The Strategic Petroleum Reserve
President Trump’s Odd Claim
The announcement prompted an odd response from former President Trump. Through his spokesperson, President Trump claimed:
“So after 50 years of being virtually empty, I built up our oil reserves during my administration, and low energy prices, to 100% full. It’s called the Strategic National Reserves, and it hasn’t been full for many decades. In fact, it’s been mostly empty.”
There’s just nothing about that statement that is true. As you can see in the graphic below, the SPR levels have never fallen below 500,000 thousand (i.e., 500 million) barrels of crude oil since the 1980s.
In fact, the highest level ever for the SPR was in 2010, when Barack Obama was president. Further, there was actually a net decline in the SPR when President Trump was in office. When he took office in January 2017, the SPR contained 695 million barrels. When he left office four years later, the SPR contained 638 million barrels. So not only is the claim of filling it untrue, but the level of the SPR actually declined while President Trump was in office.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2022/04/01/no-former-president-trump-did-not-fill-the-strategic-petroleum-reserve/?sh=5075355568ae