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Have US Strategic Petroleum Reserve Releases Stopped? What EIA Weekly Data Shows

By OilPriceAPI · Published · EIA weekly data for the week ending Nov 6, 2026, retrieved Nov 13, 2026

US crude oil stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) were 279.535 million barrels in the week ending Nov 6, 2026, down 2.649 million barrels from the week before (EIA, WCSSTUS1). Withdrawals have not ended. They slowed sharply and did not stop: the reserve fell 0.399 million barrels in the week ending Oct 30, 2026, and 2.649 million in the week after.

This figure changes every week. Everything on this page is as of the week ending Nov 6, 2026, the latest EIA weekly value when we retrieved the series on Nov 13, 2026.

This page compares an observation by Anas Alhajji, who writes about energy markets, with EIA's weekly data. The observation that SPR withdrawals had slowed to a minimal pace is his; we rebuilt the numbers and added the week published after he wrote. Read his original article.

The claim

On Nov 5, 2026, Alhajji published “Diesel Crisis Deepens While SPR Releases Stay Minimal”. Its free preview, dated Nov 4, 2026, reads:

“The diesel crisis is intensifying. EIA data show distillate inventories plunging 3.6 mb—well above expectations—while SPR withdrawals remain negligible at just 0.4 mb. With heating demand rising and strategic stock releases staying minimal, the supply squeeze looks set to persist.”

The rest of the article is for his paid subscribers and we have not read it. The same day he asked on X: “Why have SPR withdrawals slowed so sharply even though inventories remain above the limited-drawdown floor?” The chart on his X post linking the article is labelled “Added: 68.64 mb” and “-133.26 mb”.

Verdict: Accurate when he wrote it. The latest EIA week then available, ending Oct 30, 2026, shows a fall of 0.399 million barrels, his 0.4. The next week, ending Nov 6, 2026, shows a fall of 2.649 million barrels. Withdrawals slowed sharply; they had not stopped, and one larger week does not yet show a new pace.

The week he cites: Oct 30, 2026

Both of his numbers match EIA. SPR crude stocks fell 0.399 million barrels in the week ending Oct 30, 2026, to 282.184 million (EIA, WCSSTUS1). US distillate stocks fell from 102.824 to 99.259 million barrels the same week, a drop of 3.565 million (EIA, WDISTUS1).

It was not a single quiet week. In the eight weeks from Sep 11 to Oct 30, 2026 the reserve fell 3.176 million barrels in total, an average of 0.397 million a week, and in the week ending Oct 9 it did not change. The average had been 8.161 million barrels a week in May 2026.

A note on terms. EIA's weekly series reports the stock level, so each weekly change is net: barrels delivered out of the reserve less any barrels received. This page calls a net weekly fall a draw.

US SPR crude stocks and weekly change, weeks ending Aug 28 to Nov 6, 2026, million barrels
Week endingSPR crude stocks, mbWeekly change, mb
2026-08-28286.604−3.122
2026-09-04285.360−1.244
2026-09-11284.957−0.403
2026-09-18284.552−0.405
2026-09-25283.767−0.785
2026-10-02282.983−0.784
2026-10-09282.9830.000
2026-10-16282.683−0.300
2026-10-23282.583−0.100
2026-10-30282.184−0.399
2026-11-06279.535−2.649

Source: EIA weekly series WCSSTUS1 (U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR), through the week ending Nov 6, 2026, retrieved Nov 13, 2026. Weekly changes computed by OilPriceAPI from EIA's thousand-barrel values.

How the pace changed through 2026

The reserve peaked at 415.442 million barrels, held from Mar 6 to Mar 20, 2026, and has fallen in every week since except the unchanged week ending Oct 9. The largest weekly draw was 9.920 million barrels in the week ending May 15, 2026. The table averages the weekly changes by the month each week ended in.

Average weekly change in US SPR crude stocks by month, April to October 2026
MonthWeeksNet change, mbAverage per week, mbAverage, thousand b/d
Apr 20264−17.140−4.285−612
May 20265−40.805−8.161−1,166
Jun 20264−31.464−7.866−1,124
Jul 20265−20.846−4.169−596
Aug 20264−18.205−4.551−650
Sep 20264−2.837−0.709−101
Oct 20265−1.583−0.317−45

Source: EIA weekly series WCSSTUS1, retrieved Nov 13, 2026. Averages computed by OilPriceAPI: net change divided by the number of weeks, and that divided by 7 for barrels a day.

The two labels on Alhajji's chart check out against the same series. From the peak to the week ending Oct 30, 2026: 415.442 − 282.184 = 133.258 million barrels, his 133.26. The reserve's 2023 low was 346.758 million barrels in the week ending Jul 7, 2023, so the refill to the peak was 415.442 − 346.758 = 68.684 million barrels. His chart says 68.64; we do not know which endpoints it uses, and the gap is under 0.05 million barrels.

The week after: Nov 6, 2026

EIA's value for the week ending Nov 6, 2026 came out after Alhajji wrote. It shows a draw of 2.649 million barrels, the largest weekly fall since the week ending Aug 28, 2026 (3.122 million). That is more than six times the Oct 30 draw and about a third of the May average.

The reserve is now 415.442 − 279.535 = 135.907 million barrels below its March peak. A year earlier it held 410.393 million barrels in the week ending Nov 7, 2025, so it is down 130.858 million barrels (−31.9%) in a year. The last weekly reading lower than the current one was 278.725 million barrels in the week ending Oct 8, 1982 (EIA, WCSSTUS1).

US Strategic Petroleum Reserve crude stocks, weekly since January 2018, fell from 665.6 million barrels in February 2018 to 346.8 million in July 2023, rose to 415.4 million in March 2026, then fell to 279.5 million barrels in the week ending Nov 6, 2026, the lowest in the period.3004005006002020202220242026Mar 20, 2026High 666, Feb 9, 2018SPR crude 280
US crude oil stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, million barrels, weekly, Jan 5, 2018 to Nov 6, 2026. The axis does not start at zero. Source: EIA weekly series WCSSTUS1, retrieved Nov 13, 2026.

What we did not check

EIA's weekly series gives the level, not the reason. Alhajji's question, why withdrawals slowed while stocks were still above what he calls the limited-drawdown floor, is his to answer in his article; we have not verified a floor figure and give none here.

He also asks: “Is the remaining SPR oil mostly medium sour, and what happens to US diesel output once those releases stop?” His chart splits the reserve into sour and sweet crude. The weekly EIA series used here does not split it by grade, so this page publishes no sour or sweet figure.

The diesel link

Alhajji ties the slow withdrawals to tight diesel supply. US distillate stocks were 99.259 million barrels in the week ending Oct 30, 2026, which our check of John Kemp's distillate post found was the first weekly reading under 100 million since 2003. They rose 4.071 million to 103.330 million barrels in the week ending Nov 6, 2026 (EIA, WDISTUS1), the same week as the larger SPR draw. The two moved together that week; the data here does not show that one caused the other. Refinery margins are covered in our diesel price check.

Pull weekly SPR stocks with the OilPriceAPI

On Nov 13, 2026 the API returned 279.535 million barrels for the week ending Nov 6 with a weekly change of −2.649, matching EIA.

import requests

BASE = "https://api.oilpriceapi.com/v1"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": "Token YOUR_API_KEY"}

# EIA weekly SPR crude stocks (million barrels), newest week first
resp = requests.get(f"{BASE}/ei/oil_inventories/historical",
                    params={"product": "crude_spr", "location": "spr"},
                    headers=HEADERS, timeout=30)
resp.raise_for_status()
for row in resp.json()["data"]["records"][:8]:
    print(row["week_ending"], row["volume_mmbbl"],
          f'{row["week_over_week"]:+.3f}')

Two limits to know. Our weekly SPR history currently starts at Dec 12, 2025, and most rows before Oct 9, 2026 are rounded to two decimals, so they sit up to 0.005 million barrels from EIA's value. The endpoint needs a paid plan; the response names the tier in meta.tier_required. The history since 2018 on this page comes from EIA directly. See the SPR inventory page, US inventory data and the EIA data API.

What to watch

  • The next EIA weekly value, for the week ending Nov 13, 2026. A draw back near 0.397 million barrels would make Nov 6 a single larger week inside the slow stretch Alhajji described. A second draw of similar size to Nov 6 would mean the pace has changed.
  • Distillate stocks against the 100 million barrel line, which they crossed in both directions in the two latest weeks.

Sources

  • EIA weekly series WCSSTUS1, U.S. Ending Stocks of Crude Oil in SPR, thousand barrels, Aug 1982 to the week ending Nov 6, 2026, via EIA API v2, retrieved Nov 13, 2026.
  • EIA weekly series WDISTUS1, US distillate fuel oil stocks, weeks ending Oct 23, Oct 30 and Nov 6, 2026, via EIA API v2, retrieved Nov 13, 2026.
  • Anas Alhajji, “Diesel Crisis Deepens While SPR Releases Stay Minimal”, free preview, published Nov 5, 2026, and his two X posts of Nov 5, 2026, all read Nov 13, 2026.
  • OilPriceAPI /v1/ei/oil_inventories/historical (crude_spr), Nov 13, 2026.

Credit: the observation tested here, that SPR withdrawals had slowed to a minimal pace, and the questions about why are the work of Anas Alhajji. Original work: his article of Nov 5, 2026. We compare it with EIA data; the analysis is his.

Not investment advice. No forecast is made here.