Fact check: Did Biden wreck the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and is Trump fixing it?

WASHINGTON, DC: A viral video shared by conservative commentator Eric Daugherty claims former President Joe Biden "destroyed" the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), drained 180 million barrels before the 2022 midterm elections, left one of its storage sites inoperable and forced President Donald Trump to clean up the damage.

The post has circulated widely on social media as debate over US energy policy has intensified amid renewed tensions in the Middle East. Here's what the official records, government reports and public statements show about those claims.

Claim: Biden destroyed the SPR

The Biden administration destroyed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by draining 180 million barrels before the 2022 midterms, damaging the system and leaving Trump to restore it.

Fact Check: Substantially accurate, but materially incomplete 

The largest factual claim in the video is accurate.

In 2022, the Biden administration authorized the release of 180 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to global energy disruptions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

It remains the largest emergency drawdown in the reserve's history and reduced oil inventories by roughly one-third. Most of those releases occurred before the November 2022 midterm elections.

The reserve also was not fully replenished afterward. Before the drawdown, the SPR held about 727 million barrels. By the end of 2024, inventories had recovered only to roughly 394 million barrels, well below pre-release levels.

Claims that the reserve suffered operational damage are also supported by recent evidence.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a March 2026 interview that damage sustained during the 2022 drawdown left the government operating from only three of its four storage cavern groups.

A July 2026 Government Accountability Office review similarly found that more than one-quarter of the SPR's oil is currently inaccessible because of equipment failures and salt-cavern deformation, while withdrawal capacity has fallen to about 61% of its designed level.

The report estimated roughly $230 million in repairs remain unfunded.

One claim, however, could not be independently verified.

The viral video says equipment purchased for the reserve was left above ground and ruined by weather exposure. No publicly available government report or independent documentation confirms that specific allegation, making it unverified.

The broader narrative is where the post becomes misleading.

It portrays Trump as simply rebuilding a reserve Biden depleted, but omits that the Trump administration itself authorized another major emergency release in March 2026 after the Iran war disrupted oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

That release totaled 172 million barrels as part of a coordinated international effort involving 32 countries.

As a result, the SPR fell to roughly 325–331 million barrels by late June 2026, its lowest level since 1983, and significantly below the level Trump inherited when he returned to office.

In other words, today's historically low reserve cannot be attributed solely to Biden-era decisions.

While Biden's 2022 drawdown and the resulting infrastructure problems remain well documented, the Trump administration also substantially reduced the reserve in response to a separate global energy crisis.

The viral video is mostly accurate on the underlying facts surrounding Biden's 2022 Strategic Petroleum Reserve drawdown. It correctly cites the 180-million-barrel release, the reserve's incomplete recovery and ongoing infrastructure issues.

However, its overall framing is misleading by omission because it ignores Trump's own 2026 emergency drawdown, which pushed the reserve to even lower levels.

The fuller picture is that both administrations relied heavily on the SPR during separate geopolitical crises, and neither left it fully restored.