strategic petroleum reserves of selected European countries - Spain: 144m barrels - Germany: 70m barrels - France: 65m barrels - Finland: 62m barrels - Czech Republic: 20m barrels - Denmark: 10m barrels (at 7.4 barrels per ton) - UK: working on it - USA: 200m fewer than we started 2022 with The US made a policy decision after the OPEC crisis to never put up with that shit again and the result is that Biden can open the tap if it looks like a war in europe is gonna fuck with the midterms. It also allows us to make Saudi Arabia and Russia fight for scraps if we're in the mood, or starve out Venezuela. Our fossil fuel buffer is very much a geopolitical weapon, not an economic fact, and while it definitely allows us to ignore certain geopolitical realities, it also necessarily centers warfare and geopolitics around petrostates.