Urban Speculation | Landscape Futures (opens in new tab)

The Financial Times calculates that we are already at the cavern’s ninth historic drawdown, suggesting that “catastrophic structural damage,” including dissolution of the salt caverns, is now a viable risk. This could mean, among other things, that the reserves can no longer be drained in their entirety, as “a minimum level of oil… must be kept in the salt caverns” to avoid this fate, with the result that the reserves’ effectiveness in a time of future national emergency will be reduced.