Energy Department lends SPR oil to five companies including Trafigura, Gunvor and Vitol

The loans add barrels to physical markets while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1982, and run against the administration's promise to refill it.

The US Energy Department is lending oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to five companies, among them the trading houses Trafigura, Gunvor and Vitol, a step that puts more barrels into the market while the stockpile is at its lowest since 1982.

The loans are the latest in a run of draws. The department sought an exchange of up to 17 million barrels, after offering up to 40 million in September and running a separate 4-million-barrel emergency exchange in October. Each adds supply in the near term. None rebuilds the base, which years of drawdowns under both the current and previous administrations have already worn down.

That sits badly with a refilling plan the administration has promoted since late August, and the September offer already ran against it. Officials have promised replenishment rather than more loans or swaps. The department has now gone the other way, and it has chosen to lend to commercial traders rather than to refiners or the market at large. That reads as liquidity support for intermediaries, not as stockpile policy, and the distance between the stated intention and the level of the reserve has not closed.

The demand for barrels is real. Vitol's chief, Russell Hardy, said 12 million barrels a day of crude and 2 million of products had left the Middle East in the past week to ten days, and that the shipping squeeze could push oil to $200. Energy Secretary Wright has also pressed refiners to limit diesel exports voluntarily, a softer option than a threatened short-term ban.

A reserve that is lent from, swapped and drawn on in turn is being run as a supply valve. For anyone pricing oil, the barrels help now, but the thinner buffer leaves less to meet the next disruption.