Pins matching tag:Exchange

The first tranche of the 172-million-barrel release went out as a request for proposals on 13 March 2026, covering 86 million barrels from Bryan Mound, West Hackberry and Bayou Choctaw. Bids were due the following Tuesday, and the borrowers must hand the oil back with extra barrels on top.

DOE went back to the market on 1 April 2026 for a third exchange, this one drawn entirely from the Bryan Mound caverns outside Freeport, Texas. Bidders had until the following Monday, and a limited Jones Act waiver let them move the crude on foreign-flagged ships to get it to refiners faster.

DOE had asked for up to 30 million barrels of sweet crude from West Hackberry on 9 April 2026; eight days later it awarded contracts for 26 million of them, with deliveries starting at once. By then more than 10 million barrels of the wider exchange had already reached the market.

After soliciting up to 92.5 million barrels from all four storage sites - the largest single exchange in the reserve's history - DOE awarded contracts for 53.3 million on 11 May 2026, at a return premium of about 28 per cent. That is 15.1 million extra barrels owed back to the stockpile.