[JohnDenver]

Needed: three 1-billion-barrel oil banks

"However, were the SPR expanded beyond its current capacity, and were Europe and Asia encouraged to establish similarly large oil banks, the SPR could serve as a liquidity mechanism to replace that of OPEC's capacity.

While certainly costly in the short term, expanding each of the U.S., European and Asian strategic reserves to contain 1 billion barrels would have the long-term benefit of keeping the market liquid. The stored oil could be released at will to compensate for supply reductions."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mp ... ok/2814431

You wonder about the scheduling of this kind of mega-hoarding. Even just the US increasing its hoard from 700 to 1000 million barrels would add 1mbd to world demand if it was done over the course of a year.

[Tyler_JC]

I wonder what will happen when Asia, Europe, and the USA each try to fill up these massive new tanks at the same time. We would reach peak demand right there. The price shock would devastate the world economy. Each government would say, "Look, we need oil reserves to stop these price spikes!". Unfortunately, it was the governments who caused the problem in the first place. No one would notice that little fact and they would keep filling up until there wasn't anymore oil to fill in the tanks with. Assuming that people still used oil, each government would quickly empty its reserve to "feed" it's economy. In a year when all of it was used up, people might start to take peak oil seriously...people can be so stupid.