President Gerald Ford signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act that created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Ford signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 on December 22, 1975. The law responded chiefly to the 1973–74 oil crisis, when an OPEC embargo and supply disruption sent fuel prices soaring and exposed the United States’ vulnerability to imported petroleum.
The act established a federal policy of maintaining an emergency crude-oil reserve and gave the president authority to use it during serious supply interruptions. It also addressed energy conservation and created the framework for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards.
The reserve was not filled immediately. Storage sites were acquired in 1977, construction began that June, and the first oil—about 412,000 barrels of Saudi Arabian light crude—arrived on July 21, 1977. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve stores crude oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast, rather than maintaining a gasoline stockpile. Jimmy Carter later oversaw major development, but Ford signed the enabling law.