Running on empty: muscle cars and the dilemma of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

As luck would have it, the spiritual descendent of Steve McQueen's famous ride in the movie "Bullitt," was the only one the nice woman at the Hertz counter had at Bush Intercontinental Airport when I arrived on my way south to Freeport to visit the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. America's love affair with muscle cars like the Shelby, critics would say, got us into this fix with sky-high gasoline prices. But when you're in Big Oil country and writing about barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude, renting a Toyota Prius would be decidedly politically-incorrect.

Kurt grabs his Valentine One radar detector from the dashboard of his Chevy Suburban SUV and tosses it to me."You're gonna need this." He's right. Cars can get expensed. $250 tickets can't.

The 325 horses under the pinned hood chafe at the bit slightly during our run down Texas Route 228, about 90 miles from Freeport, Texas. Kurt, a Houston native, recommends, but only gently, keeping under 80 mph as we point the Shelby due south to the Gulf Coast, towards the Strategic Petroleum reserve site at Bryan Mound.

With oil prices topping $130 a barrel, politicians need someone to blame, and this year OPEC again is in the politicians crosshairs. And they are again looking at the SPR for some small measure of relief, and the Congress voted this month to stop the flow of 76,000 barrels a day to this rainy-day reserve. That may feel good politically and buy some time for beleaguered politicians, but when you consider that the US economy gulps 22 million barrels per day, it hardly passes the supply-and-demand reality test.

Ironically, both the Shelby Mustang and the SPR are pretty much the same age, and in a odd way, interconnected, given that America's love affair for more horsepower was powered by cheap gas in the 1960s. But the 1973 Arab-Israeli war slammed the brakes on the muscle car era, as the OPEC-led embargo in the aftermath of the Israeli victory and the US airlift that helped the tiny Jewish state escape annihilation, forced Americans into mile-long gas lines, rationing, and the general feeling post-Vietnam that the US was a helpless giant.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes first called for a strategic reserve in 1944, the last full year of World War II. President Harry Truman called for one in 1952, while President Dwight Eisenhower repeated the plea after the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Still, the SPR wasn't developed until 1975. The first oil for the reserve didn't start arriving until 1977 under President Jimmy Carter -- a total of 416,000 barrels of Saudi Arabian light-sweet crude. President George W. Bush has been filling the SPR almost since the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The sun is well up in the sky as Kirk and I liberally don sunscreen a little too late. The Valentine chirps and buzzes as Texas' finest do their best to include us as benefactors to the Lone Star state's general fund. Thankfully, we are not solicited for such an involuntary contribution. Nods from full-bellied men sitting astride Harley Davidson Road Kings along the way are a small sign of respect the Shelby commands as she heads into Freeport, home of the Department of Energy's Bryan Mound, the largest SPR site in the US.

The military has a term: “hiding in plain sight” and in that regard, the Bryan Mound is well hidden in these parts where refineries are as common as Starbucks in Manhattan. From the air, or the ground, the SPR looks like just another jumble of pipes, transfer stations, chain link fences and tank farms. Except for the dark squat lump of green and black standing astride the road, which gets bigger and bigger as the Shelby speeds along the levee wall.

"Let's turn in here," Kurt said.

The Shelby reefed sharply into to the entrance to Bryan Mound, probably a little too fast for safety and not what anyone tasked with security likes to see, a speeding car heading toward a barricade and a guard building with bullet-proof glass.

The turret gunner on the black and green lump, now a AM General M1114 Humvee slewed round and dipped the muzzle end of his M249 Squad Automatic Weapon ever so slightly. Not enough to put the occupants in any real danger of taking the business end of live jacketed 5.56mm rounds, but enough just to let you know it would be the last mistake you'd ever make, not to mention your next of kin explaining to the nice lady who called you “shug” at the Hertz rental car counter at the Houston airport about all the 0.30 caliber holes in their $55,000 machine.

The Bryan Mound is a national security site, which means its protection is on par with that of thermonuclear weapons or the resident of one 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. If you want a rent-a-cop, go to the Department of Agriculture headquarters.

Tactical web gear, sidearms nestled in tactical holsters, jet black Kevlar vests, explosives-sniffing dogs and automatic weapons are the court of the realm here. Even though we’ve been cleared in through metal detectors and our bags searched, we are kept in careful watch. Our captain, with two bars on his lapels, has the deeply serious look of a Special Forces operator, even when he's handing out water.

"Be sure to hydrate," he says as he pulls cold bottles out of a gray plastic cooler. It's more of a command than a suggestion and we heed it.

Our tour guide, whose name we can't reveal for security reasons, is a trim Hispanic man in his 40s, with a degree in mechanical engineering from University of Texas El Paso and a fellow gearhead who eyes our Shelby appreciatively. As senior site supervisor -- his official title -- he's in charge of the 180 contractors and DOE employees who staff the site 24/7, controlling inflows and outflows of oil from a two-man computerized control room where operators work 12 hour shifts each day. The Bryan Mound site sprawls in every direction for 500 acres. In addition to its own security, this SPR site has its own fire department, cafeteria, sick bay and PX.

Only the President of the United States can release oil from the SPR. To do so takes what is known as a Presidential Finding of a "Severe Energy Supply Disruption." Sorry America, $4 a gallon gasoline doesn't warrant releasing oil from the SPR, at least under this President.

There has never been a “full drawdown” of the SPR, only partial sales such as after the start of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and in 2005 -- 11 million barrels worth -- after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrecked nearly 25 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's oil drilling platforms and a good chunk of Gulf Coast refining capacity. Still, the SPR is designed to give the nation a 60 day reserve, enough time in theory for the federal government to arrange alternative means of supply, either through the State Department or the 82nd Airborne Division.

The salt caverns at the Bryan Mound site, and there are twenty of them, are 2,000 feet deep, taller than the Empire State Building, were they above ground. These, however, are drilled deep into the salt, down nearly half a mile. The site in Freeport is rounded out by four others. Big Hill near Winnie, Texas, holding 170 million barrels; West Hackberry near Lake Charles, La, holding 227 million.; and Bayou Choctaw near Baton Rouge, La. Holding 76 million barrels. A fifth, near Richton, Mississippi, is being prepared now as the SPR is slated to grow to 1 billion barrel capacity as part of the energy bill passed in 2007.

The theory behind using salt caverns to store oil isn't actually new or unique to the U.S. Germany, France and the Netherlands all use similar methods to store oil. The patents for the process were issued in 1919. The process of creating a salt dome is relatively simple. High pressure water is used to drill through the layers of anhydrite, gypsum and limestone into the underground salt mound, then the slushy, salty brine is pumped out, leaving an empty cavern. Oil is then pumped in. A series of pipes and connections to the bottom of the cavern allow water to be pumped in when the oil is needed to be evacuated. Since oil is lighter than water, it floats on top and doesn't mix. When the water is introduced at the bottom of the cavern, the oil rises to the top and can be pumped out.

The oil, currently a mix of about 40 percent sweet, or “light” crude and 60 percent sour, or “heavy” crude, which has a higher sulfur content, then can be distributed out via tanker or pipeline. Bryan Mound hold 254 million barrels of oil, the biggest of the four SPR sites. If the United States ever needed to tap the entire supply, the site can draw down at a rate of about 1.5 million barrels a day, with all four sites pumping about 4.4 million barrels, for the first 15 days. The rate falls off after that as it become harder to evacuate the oil, the DOE says.

But as much as 703 million barrels currently in the SPR is, the U.S. now consumes more than 22 million barrels of oil a day, up from 17 million barrels a day in 1988, with the protection the SPR offers being whittled away from a high of 118 days of protection from having to import any oil, down to 55 days today.

While there are lots of reasons for that, including America's love for cars like the Shelby Mustang, the primary culprit is because U.S. domestic oil production is dwindling, from nearly 8 million barrels a day in 1988, not far from Saudi Arabia's production of 9 million barrels a day, down to less than 5 million barrels a day today.

The less oil we produce here, the more we must import. As such, crude oil imports have risen from 6 million barrels a day in 1988 to more than 10 million barrels a day, nearly half the US daily total demand. The US as a nation began to import more oil than we produced back in 1992 and the gap has widened ever since.

The SPR is set to expand to 1 billion barrels. If you do the math, oil prices have risen more than $100 since President Bush began filling the SPR back in 2001, taking about 150 million barrels off the market. Filling the SPR to its new 1 billion capacity, will require another 300 million barrels. What member of Congress, (and what president) would approve filling the SPR now with record oil prices and an eye on their re-election?

Back in 2001, the Cato Institute had a provocative idea. Sell the oil in the SPR, not fill it. After all, if the federal government is stockpiling oil, what incentive does the American consumer or the private industry have to invest in alternative sources of energy or produce its own privately-held stockpiles, which could be used to lower oil prices at a time of record-highs?

Just think if Chevron or ExxonMobil had its own 254 million barrel oil stockpile. It could undercut the market when gas prices are high, giving needed relief to cash-strapped consumers, and buy back oil when prices are low. Moreover, it would remove politicians from the supply and demand decisions. No longer could a politician flood the market with oil to keep prices low during an election year (Bill Clinton) or continue buying oil when prices are at records highs to reward friends in oil producing states. (George Bush) But selling the oil, worth $98 billion at current prices and dismantling the SPR would mean a loss of cushy federal contracts and well-paid government jobs and no politician will vote for that.

As our tour of the Bryan Mound concludes, our tour guide follows me out the parking lot.

"Can I take a look?" he asks, pointing to the Shelby.

I toss him the keys and his eyes light up. "Hell, you can drive."

I figure at least he'll return it with a full tank of gas. After all, he's got the hook-up...

Too bad the average American doesn't.