According to Woofun AI, the U.S. Department of Energy has officially launched the procedure to release crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, allowing up to 40 million barrels to be withdrawn from the reserve.

This measure is intended to provide a potential source of oil supply later this year, but as of now, no batch of crude oil has actually been allocated.

The opening of this application channel marks a new execution phase for the previously announced plan to release 172 million barrels of crude oil, of which 40 million barrels is the upper limit of the total volume proposed for this round, rather than the physical quantity that has already entered the market.

It is worth noting that this expectation of large-scale supply did not trigger severe market turbulence immediately, and its impact mechanism needs to be deconstructed in depth by combining the timeline with the lag in macroeconomic data.

The misalignment of the timeline is the core variable that makes it difficult for the announcement to immediately affect market expectations. The U.S. Department of Energy issued the tender notice on September 29, setting the application deadline at 11 a.m. U.S. Central Time on October 6, while delivery of approved crude oil was arranged for November and December.

At the same time, investors are closely watching the August personal income and outlays report scheduled for release by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis at 8:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time on September 30, which includes the key PCE (personal consumption expenditures) price index.

Because the PCE data reflect economic activity in August, it can neither cover the reserve release plan of September 29 nor reflect crude oil market dynamics at the end of September.

More critically, according to the timetable published by the Department of Energy, the newly released crude oil could not reach buyers at all before the report was published.

Data compiled by Woofun AI show that this time gap between physical delivery and data publication makes supply-related announcements act more on psychological expectations in the short term, rather than immediately changing supply and demand fundamentals.

If the Department of Energy's move did indeed change people's expectations for oil price trends, the path of bitcoin price changes would be reflected through transmission mechanisms such as inflation expectations, bond yields, and the direction of Federal Reserve interest rates, but currently available data do not show that this specific announcement has had a substantive impact on those markets or on the BTC price.

From a macroeconomic perspective, the trajectory of inflation and interest rates had basically taken shape before the announcement was released. In a report published on August 26, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis pointed out that overall PCE inflation in July was 3.7%, while core inflation excluding food and energy factors was 3.3%.

The agency also plans to conduct annual revisions to previous monthly estimates in the future.

Because inflation remained elevated, the Federal Reserve raised the policy rate range to 3.75%-4% on September 16.

Changes in interest rate expectations after the release of the August report will affect assets sensitive to financing conditions, but that does not mean the Department of Energy's announcement will change August oil price levels.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's September forecast said that, affected by falling inventories and supply restrictions in the Middle East, Brent crude oil prices may remain around $90 per barrel in the second half of 2026.

That forecast was formulated on September 3, before the reserve release announcement, and serves only as background reference for oil price trends; it cannot predict the immediate impact of this additional supply on prices.

The current market snapshot further confirms the limited impact of the announcement. Data released by the U.S. Treasury on September 29 showed that the two-year Treasury yield was 4.89%, while the ten-year U.S. Treasury yield was 5.26%.

When checking the bitcoin price on the CryptoSlate website on September 30, its value was about $83,000.

These data serve only as reference and cannot prove that price changes were triggered by the announcement.

The Department of Energy's next key point is the October 6 application deadline. The final approved supply volume will determine how much crude oil can enter the market during November and December, at which point the corrective effect of physical delivery on macroeconomic expectations may truly begin to appear.