The Reporting Group spent the day digging through government websites looking for resources for reporters covering the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Tonight I started looking for useful data sets on the Department of Energy’s website. Put the word “oil” in the site’s search interface, and the first result (as of this writing) explains…

Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy. Currently, it supplies more than 40% of our total energy demands and more than 99% of the fuel we use in our cars and trucks. The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy focuses on two important concerns over oil – an immediate readiness to respond to oil supply disruptions and keeping America’s oil fields producing in the future.

In the event the United States is confronted with a serious disruption in oil supplies, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can provide an emergency supply of crude oil. The oil is stockpiled in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. President Bush has ordered the Reserve to be filled to its full 700 million barrel capacity by 2005.

Wondering if they met that metric? (Looks like they might have).