The world has nearly burned through its oil stockpile buffer, executives say: ‘System is already straining’

LONDON, Oct 6 – The amount of oil in storage that is accessible to the global market is running low, industry executives said at a forum in London this week, making the market more fragile and putting upward pressure on prices.

Governments and energy companies have drawn oil from stockpiles to alleviate pressure in a global oil market facing unprecedented supply disruptions this year due to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

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More than one billion barrels of oil have been released mainly from onshore commercial inventories since the start of this year’s Middle East crisis, which was the last major tool in the box, Nasser said.

The International Energy Agency, the West’s oil watchdog and coordinator of its strategic oil reserves, is preparing to release 100 million barrels of crude and diesel to help alleviate soaring diesel prices, but it is not clear if some of that total will include volumes from its record first 400 million barrel release in March that hadn’t hit the market yet.

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Supply resilience cushion is scarily thin

The loss of the oil market’s buffers has made the market more fragile, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said on Tuesday, adding that this has increased oil’s price floor.An aerial view shows ships anchored off the coast of Khasab in Oman’s Musandam Governorate, near the Strait of Hormuz, on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026. AFP via Getty ImagesThe loss of the oil market’s buffers has made the market more fragile, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said on Tuesday, adding that this has increased oil’s price floor. REUTERS

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The world is reliant on the seaborne oil exports escaping the Middle East “to keep things in balance as we go through winter, because there aren’t any more inventories to drain in the West,” the CEO of commodities trader Vitol Russell Hardy said.

Stocks of crude ​oil in ‌the US Strategic Petroleum ​Reserve ​are at their ​lowest since October 1982, ​according to ​data from the ‌Department ⁠of Energy.

Natural gas inventories are also depleted, making prices vulnerable to spikes. A bad winter could bring about a “bloodbath” in the gas market in the first quarter of 2027 if storage hits minimal levels, Petronas CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik ​said.

(*) Full article: https://nypost.com/2026/10/07/business/the-worlds-oil-stockpile-is-running-severely-low-executives-say/