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Global oil inventories are at dangerously low levels as an agreement to reopen tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains elusive, industry executives and analysts cited by Reuters warned today.
The situation threatens to trigger a new price shock in the coming weeks, with enough potential to destabilize the financial markets as a whole.
The crisis originates from the military conflict between the United States and Israel against Iran, which broke out in early 2026 and caused a significant disruption in tanker traffic through the strait, a route that accounts for approximately 20% of the world's crude oil supply and a similar proportion of global liquefied natural gas.
Emergency buffers that the world deployed to contain the crisis are depleting rapidly. The International Energy Agency (IEA) coordinated the release of over 400 million barrels of strategic reserves since the onset of the crisis, of which 164 million had already been released as of May 8.
In its May report, the IEA warned that inventories are declining "at a record pace" and that "rapidly depleting stocks amid ongoing disruptions may foreshadow future price spikes."
The Swiss bank UBS was even more straightforward: the discounted mattresses are "largely sold out," and there is a risk of panic buying if the physical shortage worsens.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that global inventories will decline by an average of 8.5 million barrels per day during the second quarter of 2026, and estimates a Brent price around 106 dollars per barrel under the scenario of continued disruption in Ormuz.
Market estimates indicate even higher figures: between 130 and 140 dollars per barrel if the strait remains effectively closed.
The price trajectory has been dizzying. Brent was trading around 72 dollars at the end of February; it surpassed 80 dollars in the early days of March, closed at 112.57 dollars on March 28 —its highest level since 2022— and exceeded 126 dollars in April.
According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, the last temporary buffers — Russian and Iranian floating storage plus the IEA reserves — would be depleted around July 9, 2026, leaving the market exposed to a deficit of approximately 7.1 million barrels per day, which is equivalent to 16% of the global crude oil trade.
The same institution estimates that the effective closure of Ormuz has eliminated between 15% and 17% of global oil demand, excluding alternative pipelines available.
OPEC+ agreed to increase production by 188,000 barrels per day for June, but analysts point out that this increase has a limited impact as long as the bottleneck is transportation and not production, given that most of the group's spare capacity requires the Strait to be open to reach the markets.
For Cuba, which was already grappling with a severe energy crisis with reserves for barely 15-20 days at the end of January, the deterioration of the global situation further exacerbates a landscape that was already critical before the Ormuz crisis shook international markets.
Even if a diplomatic agreement were to be reached in the coming days, analysts estimate that it could take about six weeks to physically clear the strait, pushing any real normalization until mid-August 2026.
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