Iran War Is Draining World’s Oil Buffer at an Unprecedented Pace

The world has burned through oil inventories at a record speed as the Iran war throttles flows from the Persian Gulf, eating into the very buffer that protects against supply shocks.

The rapidly shrinking stockpiles mean that the risk of even more extreme price spikes and shortages is getting ever-closer, leaving governments and industries with fewer options to cushion the impact of the loss of more than a billion barrels of supply, two months into the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The sharp depletion will also mean the market stays vulnerable for longer to future disruptions even after the conflict ends.