The world is quickly depleting its stores of oil, putting more pressure on President Trump to reach a deal with Iran that would quickly get more fuel flowing out of the Persian Gulf.
Vast stockpiles of oil, gasoline and other fuels have helped fill the hole in global energy supplies created by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. But those reserves, which companies and governments stash in giant steel storage tanks and underground salt caverns, are running low in some places. This week, U.S. government stockpiles were poised to hit their lowest levels since 1983.
That ominous milestone was overshadowed by Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the United States and Iran were close to striking a peace deal. His statements sent international oil prices below $90 a barrel, well above prewar prices but nowhere near the highs hit earlier in the war.
Still, it is far from clear what a truce might entail. Unless the supply of oil and fuels improves — and quickly — consumers around the world may face much higher energy costs.
There is little consensus about when or where this may come to a head, but energy experts broadly agree that until more oil is able to flow through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway on Iran’s southern coast, the market will remain worrisomely fragile.
“Soon enough, we’ll run out of shock absorbers,” said Antoine Halff, a co-founder of the research firm Kayrros and a former chief oil analyst at the International Energy Agency.
The world uses around 100 million barrels of oil every day. Reserves have dwindled especially quickly in places that depend heavily on imports, such as Japan and South Korea. The United States, the world’s biggest oil producer, is also draining its tanks as companies ramp up exports to supply the rest of the world.
Persian Gulf countries, on the other hand, have been stockpiling, and not by choice. The closure of the strait has meant that most of them can sell much less oil than normal, and so are stuck holding much more fuel. Some have managed to get more vessels through the strait in recent weeks, providing some relief.
And then there is China. The country has what is widely believed to be the world’s largest cache of oil — roughly a third of all known reserves, according to the research firm Kpler — and appears to have barely touched it. It is possible, Mr. Halff said, that China is tapping underground reserves that are harder to monitor.
“China is one of the biggest question marks, the biggest puzzles,” Mr. Halff said.
The picture becomes more troubling when looking at inventories of specific fuels. Stores of gasoline and fuel oil, used for heating, are especially low around the world, particularly for this time of year.
Still, the world is not yet facing widespread shortages.
“We have less oil in the world, and it is starting in the corners here to show up in end-use markets,” said Rick Joswick, an oil analyst for S&P Global Energy. “But there’s no smoking gun I can point at and say, ‘Aha, these airports are not getting their jet fuel, or these consumers can’t get their gasoline.’”
In places like the United States, prices at the pump would probably climb long before fuel tanks were depleted, analysts said. Coastal regions like the Northeast and California, which depend on a lot of imported oil and gasoline, are especially vulnerable to price increases.
Yet it is very hard to predict when or where fuel supplies might fall low enough for that to happen.
“There are various choke points, and it’s really hard to model which might come first,” said Daniel Sternoff, a senior fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.
To understand why, just look at jet fuel. Early in the war, many analysts and executives worried that some airports in Europe, which buys a lot of jet fuel from the Persian Gulf, might not have enough for planes to take off. Refining companies, which turn oil into fuels, responded to high prices by ramping up jet fuel production while making less gasoline.
U.S. oil reserves are held by businesses or the government. The government supplies, known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or S.P.R., are essentially a last line of defense, available in case of emergencies.
The United States is partway through a 172-million-barrel withdrawal, one of its largest ever. That will leave the reserve, a collection of salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, emptier than it has been in almost a half century, soon after the 1970s oil crises, when it was being filled for the first time.
There is still plenty of company-owned oil available in the United States and elsewhere. But the depletion of the S.P.R. will leave the federal government with less flexibility to support the market if the United States and Iran fail to complete a deal or shipping remains constrained.
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