Why the US stores 700M barrels of oil underground

My interpretation wasn't that they're working together, i.e. coordinating, more like acting in unison where they are each given a different pressure-point to attack suited to their innate abilities or field. So a central goal would be established at the highest level and you give a task to each entity that can contribute in their own separate ways to that goal - e.g. a newspaper leaks something that will destabilize something. An NGO will support a particular group with food, AID, legal advice, protection. A diplomat will call in some favors.

They're all doing different things with different effects that will hopefully contribute towards the greater goal, which would also explain how things can go pear-shaped if it doesn't all lock together into a cohesive outcome.

But there's another country they're looking to disrupt, one who's primary source of income is through oil sales due to sanctions. Their biggest enemy.

Iran.

By contrast, the US added about three million barrels per day in three years ('12,'13,'14).

Most of the oil price damage was caused by the dollar. Oil had been running at significant global oversupply for years before the dollar began to crash the price back in June/July 2014. That same dollar effect threw Canada into a recession, cut Australia's growth rate in half, and crushed emerging markets including Brazil.

Long before Saudi Arabia boosted production, the dollar took off on its greatest run in decades. Oil immediately began to crash from there forward.

The USSR also collapsed due to the strong dollar 30 years ago, which dropped the price of oil substantially. Oil went from $140 inflation adjusted, for three years, to plunging off a cliff to $35 or so, courtesy of Volcker's strong dollar move. And then again Russia nearly imploded during the cheap oil days of 1997-2000, also caused by an extremely strong dollar (gold hit around ~$250).

Not really. OPEC's strategy is one of production. Based on their reserves, OPEC could keep it up for decades. If you're dumping a strategic reserve, it has a limited time span and likely the market can estimate how long since the reserve was public info.

Overall (according to google sleuthing) the price of copper was down by about 25% in 1971–1972 compared to 1970.

Keep in mind: (1) Copper made up something like 2/3 of Chile’s exports at the time, so every incremental price drop was a severe blow; (2) The US simultaneously cut Chile off from international credit and aid; (3) The CIA helped organize industrial sabotage, protests, strikes, etc., so there was also some disruption to Chilean production at the time.

You can read the White House memo here: http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdm-nixon/nsdm-93.pdf

It's basically there to both protect Canada's domestic syrup producers and extend the sales market internationally.

You can bet your tuque that the reserve would be put into play if New England syrup producers made a move that might hurt the Quebec producers across the border.

You may have heard the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right."

Not only do you still have to spend energy mining and transporting coal, but the energy spent refining the coal is immense compared to what refinable products you get out of it.

There is also market evidence where people are more willing to put their money into technological development of fracking than liquefaction.

It's best to be suspicious whenever a source suggests that coal liquefaction, and other processes like it, are that simple. A good book on the topic is Oil 101 by Morgan Downey.

The "sit on it" strategy assumes that the resource held in reserve will not become obsolete. It makes more sense to me to pull it all out of the ground as fast as you can, so you can sell more of it when the global price is highest, rather than being forced to buy at that time.

Didn't China learn anything from its rare earths play? The supply curve never really hits a brick wall. As long as the price keeps going up, the market keeps producing more to sell. And even if you hit a hard limit, such as by exhausting all the cheap wells and mines, human ingenuity often produces an acceptable substitute.

Many countries are burning the petroleum as fast as they can, keeping the computers running for the engineers researching wind, solar, nuclear fission, geothermal, hydrogen, fracking, cellulose enzymes, algae oils, nuclear fusion, radioisotope thermal, external combustion engines, generator-electric hybrids, fuel cells, denser batteries, more efficient motors and transmissions, and a whole host of other technologies that will finally be ready to take over, once the last oil on Earth is being burned by China to keep its lights on and tractors running.

Everyone else will be running their tractors with fuels mixed up from agricultural waste, and keeping the lights on with a dozen different competing technologies.

It seems like a bad strategy to me, but I'm not Chinese.

We (the United States) produce around 9 million barrels per day, and could produce more if necessary. We import a bit more than 7 million barrels per day.

We wouldn't need to replace domestic production, so the strategic reserve would cover about 100 days of lost imports. But there are few if any scenarios where we'd lose all imports -- most likely we'd lose access to only a small fraction of imports, and even that kind of shock would spike prices and thus our consumption would drop and domestic production would increase -- so the reserve can be expected to last far more than 100 days. (If we are ever in a situation where it seems plausible the reserve might be exhausted, e.g., a major global war, then extreme conservation measures will be enforced, and the discussion changes state.)