Flood The Zone · Scenario model
What does fuel cost when the reserve is empty?
Move the assumptions yourself. This runs ten thousand versions of an oil disruption and shows the range of outcomes, not a single scary number. Every assumption is on this page and every one is adjustable.
Starting values, October 14, 2026: reserve 283.0 million barrels (DOE, Sept 30) · gasoline $4.44 a gallon · headline inflation 3.4% (CPI-U, 12 months to July) · world supply 103 mb/d.
The disruption
Start from a preset, then change anything. Reset puts it back to today's figures.
Million barrels a day, lost at once. The 2026 disruption removed about 10.1 — roughly a tenth of world supply.
A steady decline in what the world can produce, year after year. This is the different question: not an outage that ends, but a floor that keeps dropping.
Zero for a reserve that is empty or unusable. GAO assessed the maximum drawdown rate at 2.7 as of December 2025, with one of the four sites then at zero. That is the most recent published assessment, not a measurement of today.
At the rate above this volume would last 9.3 months, then the release stops and the gap reopens. Storage totals do not establish what can actually be delivered on schedule.
Illustrative scenario, not a forecast. This disruption is — of world supply, beyond the roughly 5% above which this model's own notes say the arithmetic stops meaning much. The ranges below reflect the assumptions chosen here, not a validated probability for real prices.
Highest simulated gasoline price
$—
Highest simulated inflation
—%
Modeled difference from the release
—
Gasoline, dollars a gallon
Headline inflation, percent a year
The assumptions, and how to change them
Five things nobody knows precisely. Each run picks a value at random from inside these ranges, which is why the answer is a band and not a line.
Other producers pump more, companies draw down their own tanks, people drive less. The biggest assumption here. It is set so the model reproduces 2026 — a 10.1 loss that moved crude about 65%, not 600%. A steady decline is absorbed less than a sudden outage, because there is no spare capacity to call on, and the model accounts for that.
The short-run demand elasticity; lower means price moves more. Published estimates sit between 0.02 and 0.10. Past the first year the model lets this rise toward 0.35, because people buy different cars and industry adapts — which is why long projections bend back down.
The rest is refining, distribution, taxes and margin. EIA expects this below 45% in 2026–27, down from over 50%.
Energy is about 6.5% of the inflation basket directly, but diesel moves the food and the goods. This multiplies the direct effect.
Pass-through from crude to pump is fixed at 42% in the first month, rising toward 90% by month six — the measured figure.
What this model cannot tell you
This is an illustration with its assumptions showing, not a forecast. It models one thing — an oil shortfall working through crude, the pump and the basket. It does not model a recession, a central bank raising rates, rationing, a refinery fire, a currency move, or a war ending. Any of those would matter more than the sliders above.
Three specific warnings. Above roughly 5% of world supply the arithmetic stops meaning much: real markets ration and destroy demand in ways no elasticity captures. The model assumes the reserve can deliver what the slider says, when GAO found the real rate is 61% of design with one of four sites at zero. And the long-horizon curves bend down because demand adapts — that adaptation is real, but its speed is the least certain number in here.
The honest headline is the modest one. Under almost every setting the reserve is worth a few cents a gallon for a few months — real, measurable, and far smaller than either side claims.
Where the numbers come from
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Oil in the reserve | 283.0 M bbl | DOE Quick Facts, Sept 30 2026 |
| Authorized capacity | 714 M bbl | DOE Quick Facts |
| Real delivery rate | 2.7 mb/d | GAO-26-106918 — 61% of design |
| Gasoline, starting point | $4.44 | National average, 2026 |
| Inflation, starting point | 3.4% | CPI-U, 12 months to July 2026 |
| Crude-to-pump pass-through | 42% | Kilian & Zhou, J. Public Economics, 2024 |
| Reserve's share of oil price variance | under 8% | Kilian & Zhou, Dallas Fed, 2020 |
These starting values are refreshed from the weekly EIA and monthly BLS releases. Full research, dated and linked: the Truth Portal.