Need To Consider a Regional Petroleum Reserve for All Petroleum Products

Gao ID: EMD-79-14 March 20, 1979

A review of efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to create a strategic petroleum reserve has brought to light the fact that legislation which authorized the development of regional reserves has not been fully implemented. Specifically, DOE has failed to obtain sufficient data concerning demand and imports of refined petroleum products.

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act requires DOE to annually develop and evaluate product demand and import data for each of its regions to determine whether regional product storage is needed to offset the impact of a supply interruption. DOE has failed to comply with this requirement. While DOE believes that no regional reserves, other than for residual oil, are needed and collection of the data necessary to more effectively implement the law may not be cost effective, DOE has not made the analysis necessary to support this belief.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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