Global Oil Inventory Levels — US Crude, SPR & OECD Days of Cover
How much oil buffer stands between the Strait of Hormuz disruption and a pump-level shortage. US commercial crude, Cushing and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (EIA, weekly), plus OECD and European days of demand cover (IEA, monthly).
US commercial crude oil inventories sit at about 411.7 million barrels (excluding the SPR) — an unexpected BUILD against a forecast draw, still roughly 6% below the 5-year average — while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last stood at about 311.4 million barrels (Jul 10 print, this week's figure not yet confirmed), its lowest level since April 1983. Including the SPR at that last-confirmed level, total US crude stocks stand at roughly ~728 million barrels, still near the multi-decade low last matched in October 1984. The paradox deepens by the day: overnight, Yemen's Houthis said they fired missiles and drones directly at two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea — the first confirmed direct tanker strike in that chokepoint this cycle — and Brent traded near $96 intraday Thursday, a six-week-plus high, after the US ran a 12th consecutive strike night on Iran and Trump threatened to bomb a bridge or power plant in or near Tehran over any new attack on a Hormuz-transiting ship. The domestic SPR buffer remains near 1983 levels even as commercial crude ticked up — a market that may still need to lean on its emergency reserve if the physical picture in the Gulf deteriorates further. This page tracks the oil buffer that sits behind every shortage on the map: how much usable inventory remains, and how fast it is being spent.
The US emergency oil reserve has fallen to its lowest level since April 1983
Crude oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in millions of barrels. Each point = the reserve's level at year-end (2026 = the week ending July 10). The reserve is an underground government stockpile drawn on only during supply emergencies.
How to read these levels
Oil inventory is the buffer between supply and demand. When a chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz constrains crude flows, the shortfall is met first by drawing down stock — commercial tanks, the Cushing hub, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — before it ever reaches the pump. Watching that stock fall is watching the buffer being spent. The US numbers above are weekly and precise (from the EIA); the OECD and European figures are monthly and lagged (from the IEA), so they tell you the direction and the cover, not a daily level.
Why US crude and the SPR are drawing down
US commercial crude held near the top of its 5-year range into mid-May, peaking around 449.8 Mbbl, then fell over ten consecutive weeks, BUILT once (+3.0 Mbbl to 411.3 Mbbl, w/e Jul 3), drew back down (−1.7 Mbbl to 409.7 Mbbl, w/e Jul 10), and then BUILT again, unexpectedly: +2.0 Mbbl to 411.7 Mbbl for the week ending July 17, 2026 (EIA Today in Energy, released Jul 22) — against a forecast draw — still about 6% below the 5-year average. This week's Cushing figure was not found in a clean official source at time of writing. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has carried much of the strain throughout: its last confirmed reading was about 316.5 Mbbl (w/e Jul 10), its lowest level since April 1983 (~44.3% of the 714 Mbbl authorized capacity, down 98.9 Mbbl since the Feb 28 war start) — this week's SPR-specific figure has not yet been found in a clean official source, so treat any "total including SPR" figure (roughly 728 Mbbl using the last-confirmed SPR level) as provisional. Refined products both built this week: gasoline +0.8 Mbbl to ~211.4 Mbbl (~7% below the 5-year average), distillate +1.4 Mbbl to ~109.6 Mbbl (~10% below the 5-year average). Retail prices (last confirmed print) — regular gasoline $3.855/gal (+$0.078 w/w), diesel $4.796/gal (+$0.218 w/w) — were still climbing even before this week's sharp Brent rally is fully passed through. That sits against a Hormuz backdrop that has deteriorated further since this data was printed: overnight, Yemen's Houthis said they fired missiles and drones directly at two Saudi tankers — the Encelia and the Layla — in the Red Sea, the first confirmed direct tanker strike in that chokepoint this cycle; the US ran a 12th consecutive strike night on Iran; and Trump threatened to bomb a bridge or power plant in or near Tehran over any new Iranian attack on a Hormuz-transiting ship. Brent traded near $96 intraday Thursday — a six-week-plus high, roughly +48% above its ~$65 pre-war level — with WTI above $88.
Europe's oil position and the 90-day rule
Europe is the more exposed region, and it is governed by a hard floor: under the EU's emergency oil stockholding rules, member states must hold the equivalent of around 90 days of net imports in strategic reserve. That obligation is the backstop — but the working buffer above it is thin. On some measures, jet and middle-distillate cover has slipped below the IEA's roughly 23-day comfort threshold, which is precisely the stress that surfaces on the shortages map as European jet-fuel and diesel strain. Europe gets a fuller per-country treatment on the gas side; on oil, the days-of-cover figure is the metric to watch.
What we track precisely — and what we don't
Honesty about sourcing is part of the point. Here is the line between the measured and the estimated:
- Precise & weekly: US commercial crude, Cushing, the SPR, gasoline and distillate — all from the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report.
- Precise but monthly/lagged: OECD and EU commercial stocks and days of cover, from the IEA Oil Market Report.
- Qualitative only: crude on water (floating storage), ARA refined-product stocks in north-west Europe, and Chinese and Saudi domestic reserves. These are either paywalled or genuinely opaque, so we describe their direction in words rather than publish a precise number we cannot stand behind.
We do not show a per-facility "fill %" map for oil the way we do for EU gas, because no public feed publishes live per-site crude levels — a map of invented fills would look authoritative and be wrong. When a reliable per-site feed exists, we will add it.
Why it matters
Inventory cover is the countdown that connects the chokepoint to the checkout. A blocked strait does not cause a shortage on day one; it causes a drawdown, and the shortage arrives when the drawdown runs out of room. The SPR at a multi-year low, commercial crude below its 5-year range, products on double-digit consecutive draws, and European cover near the IEA threshold are, together, the measure of how much room is left. The global picture has a second, largely separate pressure point right now: Ukraine's drone campaign has disabled a claimed 42.74% of Russia's designed oil refining capacity (independent estimates put the functional disruption closer to a third), including Omsk — Russia's single largest refinery — forced offline Jul 6-7, and Russia responded by banning all diesel exports Jul 8-31. That tightens the same global product pool the US and Europe draw on, on top of, not instead of, the Hormuz-driven crude story above. That is why this page sits alongside the chokepoint transit data and the shortages map: one shows the disruption, one shows the buffer, and one shows where the buffer has already run out.