Recent announcements that the government and allies will do it, as in [this article](https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/politics/us-strategic-petroleum-reserve-release-latest/index.html) made me wonder. Found [info about what and where SPR is](https://www.energy.gov/fecm/strategic-petroleum-reserve-4) but curious about what happens.
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When the government sells oil from the SPR, they collect money from refiners and ship oil to refiners by pipeline, truck, or train. The SPR sites are connected to oil transportation networks, that’s how they got the oil into the reserve in the first place.
More frequently, oil is swapped, especially when a temporary event causes an oil market disruption (like a hurricane on the gulf shuttering production). The swaps are a trade of oil today for oil in the future. Same process, oil is released to refiners, and returned when production resumes.
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