The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: United States energy security, oil politics, and petroleum reserves policies in the twentieth century

The history of U.S. petroleum reserves policies in the twentieth century, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) program, provides a case study of the economic and political aspects of national security, and shows the ways in which the American political economy influences national security. One key problem plagued federal petroleum reserve programs and proposals throughout the twentieth century. In a political economy which traditionally placed strong emphasis upon the sanctity of private property and free markets, could the government develop an emergency petroleum reserve policy despite opposition from the private sector? Previous literature on the SPR and oil-stockpiling programs has largely disregarded the historical perspective, focusing instead upon econometric models, suggesting future oil-stockpiling policy options. This study will also make conclusions about the future of governmental oil-stockpiling policies, particularly with regard to the SPR program, but it will do so informed by a systematic history of the emergency petroleum reserve impulse in the twentieth century.; Through a study of the emergency petroleum reserve impulse, one can see how the American political economy of oil and energy changed over the twentieth century. As petroleum became crucial to the military and then economic security of the United States, the federal government sought to develop emergency petroleum reserves first for the military, then for the civilian economy. But while the American petroleum industry could deliver the energy "goods" to American energy consumers at a reasonable price, the companies reigned supreme in the political equation. While that was true, federal petroleum reserve programs and proposals conflicted with and were overwhelmed by the historic American tradition of individual economic and private property rights.; The depletion of American petroleum reserves changed that political equation, and the ensuing energy crises of the 1970s not only brought the issue of national energy autonomy into the realm of national security considerations, but also allowed for an unprecedented level of government intervention into the marketplace of oil and energy in peacetime. The federal government assumed the role of protecting and serving the interests of energy consumers, a role which had previously been the sole purview of the private sector.; What resulted was a complex, chaotic, and controversial regulatory nightmare that highlighted the deficiencies of micro-management, and stoked the political momentum for deregulation in the 1980s, which continued into the 1990s. Gradually, government micro-management of the energy economy was abandoned. That left the SPR, a passive, market-conforming policy tool as the government's primary mechanism for combating energy crises. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...