SPR Sale & Purchase Solicitations: How the DOE Buys and Sells Reserve Crude

What a "Notice of Sale" is

A Notice of Sale is the Department of Energy selling crude oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. There are three broad reasons the DOE sells. The first is a congressionally mandated sale, where a law directs the reserve to raise a set amount of money by selling barrels over a defined period. The second is a test sale, a smaller, deliberate exercise to confirm the reserve's equipment and drawdown systems still work. The third is an emergency drawdown, an exchange or sale triggered by a supply disruption. In every case the DOE publishes a notice with the volume, the crude type, the delivery terms, and the schedule, and qualified companies bid on it.

What a "Purchase Solicitation" or "Notice of Purchase" is

A Purchase Solicitation is the reverse transaction. Instead of selling barrels, the DOE solicits bids to buy crude and add it to the reserve, most often to refill barrels sold in an earlier drawdown. The notice sets the volume the government wants, the crude grade, the delivery window, and the terms. Companies that meet the qualifications submit offers, and the DOE selects the bids it accepts. The two notices are mirror images: a sale takes oil out, a purchase solicitation puts oil back.

How the process works

Both sides run through the DOE's Office of Petroleum Reserves, which manages the SPR. At a high level the steps are the same whether the government is buying or selling:

• The DOE posts a solicitation. The Office of Petroleum Reserves publishes the notice with the volume, the crude type, the delivery window, and the commercial terms.
• Qualified companies bid. Firms that meet the financial and operational requirements submit offers by the deadline in the notice.
• Awards are announced. The DOE evaluates the offers, selects the ones it accepts, and announces the awarded volumes and counterparties.

Why this matters now

The mechanism has drawn attention because of the reserve's balance. After the large sales of 2022, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell to its lowest level since 1983, roughly half of its 714 million barrel design capacity. Since then the DOE has run purchase solicitations to begin refilling it. That context, a low reserve and a refill underway, is why the words "Notice of Sale" and "purchase solicitation" show up in the news. It is the state of the reserve, not a prediction about it. Whether a given solicitation is a sale or a purchase, and how large, is set by the specific notice, which is why the official DOE source below is the place to confirm what is open.

Where the official notices live

The authoritative place for current SPR sale and purchase notices is the DOE Office of Petroleum Reserves on energy.gov. Federal contracting opportunities are also listed on sam.gov. Those are the sources to check for live solicitations. We do not republish individual notice numbers here, because they change and go stale; the official pages always carry the current set.

The level these notices move

Every sale and every purchase changes one number: the SPR's crude stock, reported weekly by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in its Weekly Petroleum Status Report. We track that weekly level on the SPR page, with the broader petroleum picture on the oil dashboard. If you want to see the effect of a sale or a refill, the weekly EIA print is where it shows up.