Global stockpiles of crude and refined products have fallen to fewer than six billion barrels, down from close to ten billion when the US-Iran war began in February, and refilling them could take up to two years even after the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser told the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Monday.
The figures behind Nasser's warning are stark. Nearly three billion barrels of gross oil supply have been lost to the market since shipping through Hormuz was disrupted, he said, roughly half of what would normally have moved through the waterway over the same period. Governments covered part of the deficit by releasing more than one billion barrels from emergency reserves coordinated through the International Energy Agency, but a large share of the gap has been met by draining commercial inventories, a resource Nasser described as "the last major tool in the box." Of what is left, he said, only about 10 percent is practically available for use in an emergency.
Nasser told the conference, in remarks carried by Reuters and published in full on Aramco's website.
The system is already straining. And with precious little else the world can turn to, the supply resilience cushion is scarily thin.
How much oil is left, in numbers
| Item | At war's start (Feb 2026) | Now (Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Global oil stocks, total | About 10 billion barrels | Less than 6 billion barrels |
| Gross supply lost through Hormuz disruption | None before the war | Roughly 3 billion barrels |
| Drawn from emergency reserves and commercial stocks | None before the war | More than 1 billion barrels |
| Share of remaining stockpiles practically available | About 100 percent on paper | Roughly 10 percent in practice |
| Time to refill inventories | None before the war | Up to two years after Hormuz reopens |
Why refined fuels are worse off than crude
Even as traders have eased off the war premium and Brent crude has steadied just above $100 a barrel, the squeeze in refined products has become much more severe. Nasser put it directly: "While the squeeze on crude is serious, refined fuel prices have risen even more sharply." Diesel and other middle, distillate grades are still short across Europe and Asia because the refineries that normally process Gulf crude into fuels have had to compete for cargo space with the crude itself, and shipping through the strait is only partly restored.
The G7 agreed on Friday, in coordination with the IEA, to release roughly 100 million barrels of oil including diesel into the market to relieve that product squeeze before winter. Nasser treated that with short, lived calm, describing the release as buying time rather than solving the shortage itself. "Emergency reserves might buy us a winter. They cannot fix long-term supply," he said, a line that has since circulated widely across the industry and among OPEC delegates.
Where the deficit shows up in traders' screens
Tracked flows support the picture of a market that is physically recovering but still fragile. Kpler measured crude exports from the Middle East above pre-war levels in four of the last seven days of September, the first time that has happened since the conflict began, and the seven, day moving average reached 18.5 million barrels per day on October 1, above the 18 million barrels per day average recorded before the war. Yet Iran's own crude exports have shrunk to a trickle, and IRGC naval commander Ali Fadavi said on Sunday that only between three and four million barrels per day were still moving through the strait, a claim traders dispute.
Volume is not the same thing as security, and traders treat the two separately. More than 40 percent of Gulf oil now bypasses Hormuz by pipeline to terminals such as Yanbu, according to Kpler, so the barrels are largely reaching buyers, but the risk premium on sending a tanker through the strait itself has not gone away.
Brent crude for December settled down 1.89 percent at $100.32 a barrel on Monday and WTI for November finished at $89.43, down 1.84 percent, still near the top of their recent ranges. In pharmaceutical and airline markets there is little direct evidence yet of an oil squeeze, but in fertiliser, petrochemical and shipping markets the pinch is already visible in prices.
The Fed has been drawn back into the inflation fight
Nasser's warning has landed with unusual force in the United States, where central bankers have been debating whether to raise rates again before the end of the year instead of easing. New York Fed President John Williams said on Tuesday that while he expects one more rate hike "late this year," he sees no urgency for a move at the Fed's late October meeting. What has changed for markets is the language: Williams now stresses that he expects "somewhat larger and longer, lasting effects" from energy prices, a shift from earlier in the year when he expected the war premium to fade.
Minutes of the Fed's September 15, 16 meeting, due for release on Wednesday, will be the first hard evidence of how seriously the committee is treating the oil squeeze. Some officials had previously assumed energy inflation would be temporary. If the minutes show policymakers treating Nasser's two, year rebuild horizon as the working assumption, the door opens to a more hawkish path into 2027 than futures markets have priced.
Coincidentally, the arithmetic Nasser offered to the conference maps almost exactly onto what the Fed has been wrestling with. He estimated the world needs at least two million barrels per day of extra supply for the next two years just to refill stockpiles while meeting ordinary demand growth. That is real oil that has to come from somewhere, and it is why traders who had hoped a quick diplomatic deal would reset prices have begun hedging the less rosy scenario instead.
What to watch next
Three things follow over the next few sessions. First, the Fed minutes on Wednesday will show how far policymakers have moved toward treating energy inflation as persistent, which would push long-term yields higher. Second, more Gulf cargoes are scheduled to clear the strait this week under US naval escort, and any resumption of attacks on those tankers in the coming days would scramble the picture again. Third, traders will be watching for signals from OPEC producers on whether the cartel will lift output further at its November meeting, a decision he described as "the single biggest question the oil market faces this month."
For operators in haulage, aviation, freight and energy-intensive manufacturing, the practical message is the same whichever way prices move. Nasser's warning is not that the war will end badly; it is that the war ending well still leaves the world short of fuel for at least two years, and the market has been pricing the first half of that story, not the whole of it.
"Replacing these depleted stockpiles while simultaneously keeping up with rising global energy demand will be a multi-year challenge," Nasser told the conference. As long as that holds, Brent crude should keep a floor in the high $90s and above, inventories will stay lean into winter, and any adjustment that brings oil well below its recent averages will arrive slowly rather than in a single rush.