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New York (CNN Business) - Three days before Christmas in 1975, the US president Gerald Ford signed a law that created the first emergency crude oil reserve in the United States. The nation had been traumatized by an oil embargo a few years earlier.
At that time, OPEC, the cartel of the oil-producing nations, had absolute control over the global supply of crude. Today, the United States is one of the world's largest producers and an important oil seller, not just a buyer.
LOOK: Trump ordered the use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if necessary
But the United States still has its reservation. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) contains 645 million barrels, the world's largest reserve oil supply.
On Sunday, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, authorized the use of oil from the emergency reserve after the attacks of the weekend against the oil facilities of Saudi Arabia. The attacks impacted the heart of Saudi energy production, destroyed about 5% of the world's oil supply and caused a price increase.
LOOK: Trump: The United States is “ready to fire” for attack on oil field in Saudi Arabia
The strategic reserve, or SPR, is a four-site complex along the shores of the Gulf of Texas and Louisiana that have deep underground storage caverns, 2,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface. The largest amount of oil the SPR has had was 727 million barrels in 2009.
Only the president of the United States can order that the SPR be used, and that has happened only three times.
The SPR was most recently used in June 2011, when civil unrest in Libya destabilized world oil exports. The US Government The US, concerned that supply disruptions threaten a fragile global economy that is still recovering from the Great Recession, ordered the sale of 30 million barrels.
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The SPR was also deployed in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated the nation's oil infrastructure along the Gulf of Mexico. Its first use was in 1991 when the United States attacked Iraq in Operation Desert Storm.
Any oil extracted from the SPR would not give an immediate boost to the global supply. It has to be removed from storage and then sold in the buyers and sellers market, a process that could take about two weeks.
Saudi Arabia Oil