EU Petrol & Diesel Availability — 2026 Two-Scenario Forecast

Reading the chart. The two solid lines show what has actually happened to European petrol and diesel availability since January: both sat at full pre-crisis supply until the Strait of Hormuz closed on February 28, then slipped through spring as Hungary introduced a price cap (Mar 9) and Slovenia became the first EU country to ration road fuel (Mar 23). Today diesel sits near 85% and petrol near 88% of normal — stressed and rationed at the margins, but not in widespread station outages. From today, the two dashed pairs show where each fuel could land by December under two scenarios.

Scenario 1If the Strait of Hormuz reopens today. The counter-intuitive finding: availability keeps falling for several more weeks before it recovers. Cargoes from the Gulf take roughly two months to reach European refineries and forecourts, and ADNOC's chief executive has said full Middle East flow recovery is unlikely before late 2027 — so the barrels already missing from the pipeline stay missing through about July, and only then does supply climb back. There is also a one-off step down in mid-June as the EU's scheduled ban on Russian pipeline gas takes effect (felt in diesel, via gas-to-power competition). By December, petrol reaches ~96% and diesel ~92% of normal — near-normal, but held below 100% because the loss of Russian supply is permanent and prices recover faster than physical volume.

Scenario 2If the crisis continues — and Russia pulls back too. Inventory depletion compounds. Commercial fuel cover across Europe is already measured in weeks rather than months (IEA), and Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub stocks are at multi-year lows. Stacked on top is the Russia dimension: as the EU's own ban removes Russian pipeline gas from June 17 and Russian oil heads for a full phase-out by 2027, President Putin has signalled Moscow may pre-empt the bans and "redirect" remaining oil and product volumes to higher-paying Asian buyers amid the Hormuz price surge — pulling forward a supply loss Europe had planned to absorb gradually. Diesel degrades faster than petrol because it is more exposed to the lost Gulf and Russian flows and because winter heating demand competes directly with transport diesel from October. By December, diesel falls to ~58% and petrol to ~68% of normal — the level at which rationing-type controls spread well beyond Slovenia and Hungary into a wider cluster of member states.

Russia factorWhy Russia bends both lines. Russia is now a smaller direct supplier to Europe than before 2022 — Russian crude is already under 3% of EU oil imports and pipeline gas/LNG down to roughly 13% — so this is not a 2022-style dependency shock. But two things still move the curves: first, the EU's own scheduled ban on Russian pipeline gas (short-term contracts) takes effect June 17, 2026, removing residual supply in both scenarios and tightening diesel through gas-to-power substitution; second, Moscow has signalled it may cut and redirect its remaining exports first, which would pull that loss forward and deepen the downside in Scenario 2. The effect is diesel-weighted — petrol is only lightly exposed to the gas bans directly — and it is the reason Scenario 1 settles near 92–96% rather than a clean 100%.

MethodThis is a scenario forecast, not a prediction. The observed Jan–May line is built from confirmed government measures and import-flow data; the Jun–Dec branches are illustrative model paths, not guarantees, and the real outcome will depend on the pace of any diplomatic settlement, winter severity, refinery uptime, and whether Russia pre-empts the EU's import bans. Sources: GIE AGSI+, IEA Oil Market Report (May 2026), ACI Europe, ADNOC, EU REPowerEU phase-out regulation (Russian gas ban dates), Council of the EU, national energy regulators and government decrees. Per-disruption detail and the live EU shortage map at global-energy-flow.com/shortages/eu/.