{"id":501955,"date":"2026-06-20T03:43:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T03:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/501955\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T03:43:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T03:43:18","slug":"more-than-1-billion-barrels-of-oil-have-gone-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/501955\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 1 billion barrels of oil have gone missing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/p>\n

The Strait of Hormuz has reopened after a nearly four-month closure, but global oil reserves are depleted.
\n Petroleum reserves have hit their lowest levels in decades, with some analysts warning supplies could run critically low within weeks.
\n Industry experts say it could take months before oil flows normally again, potentially pushing prices higher despite recent declines.<\/p>\n

\n AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.<\/p>\n

\n The good news: The Strait of Hormuz is open again<\/a>, after Iran and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding this week.\n <\/p>\n

\n The bad news: It may be too late.\n <\/p>\n

\n Oil hasn\u2019t been coming out of the Middle East for nearly four months. All told, the world lost 1.15 billion barrels of oil supply during the war, according to analytics firm Kpler.\n <\/p>\n

\n That has left the oil market in a precarious state, and it\u2019s rapidly approaching a breaking point. The International Energy Administration\u2019s strategic petroleum reserves are at their lowest levels since 1990. The American emergency reserve is at a 43-year low. And commercial inventories have hit operational stress levels.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou want to see bedlam?\u201d President Donald Trump said at the G7 in Versailles Wednesday. \u201cWe run out of reserves in about four weeks.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump is right. But reopening the strait this week may not get oil out of the Persian Gulf fast enough to prevent crude inventories from effectively running to empty.\n <\/p>\n

\n Oil prices may have to go higher again.\n <\/p>\n

\n The oil market certainly believes Trump\u2019s timing is impeccable. Prices have, as he predicted, fallen like a rock<\/a> in recent days as the memorandum of understanding with Iran took shape and went into effect.\n <\/p>\n

\n Brent crude prices began falling after the mid-April ceasefire announcement, sinking from a wartime peak of $126.41 to below $80 a barrel today.\n <\/p>\n

\n Underpinning oil\u2019s decline was the historic oversaturation of crude going into the war that effectively cushioned the world from its biggest-ever supply shock. But that oversupply has evaporated and rapidly turned into a concerning deficit.\n <\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n The world\u2019s oil stockpiles have fallen \u2013 sharply \u2013 by 190 million barrels over the past several months. A critical oil hub in Cushing, Oklahoma<\/a>, which pipes fuel all around the United States, just hit its operational stress level \u2013 the equivalent of when the coffee drops below the spigot, and you need to tip the urn to get the last bits of sludge into your mug. Much of what collects at the bottom of an oil tank is unusable gunk, making it hard to maintain pressure in the pipes to get oil out to customers.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not only happening in Cushing \u2013 storage facilities around the world are nearing a tipping point.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere would be a time when you wouldn\u2019t be able to get it (oil),\u201d Trump said Wednesday, warning of a looming \u201ceconomic catastrophe\u201d had the strait not reopened. He said that would have brought him comparisons to Herbert Hoover, the former president who oversaw the beginning of the Great Depression.\n <\/p>\n

\n Reopening the strait won\u2019t immediately solve the world\u2019s inventory problem. It will only start the process of getting oil to flow normally again.\n <\/p>\n

\n The strait will need to be de-mined, empty tankers will need to start coming back into the area, production will need to restart and oil will need to start the slow journey to its destination. None of that will happen quickly \u2013 it\u2019s a process that the oil industry believes could take months before the flow of oil returns to something approaching \u201cnormal.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Until the oil market truly returns back to something approaching normal, the system will continue to rely on those stockpiles.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s why a number of industry analysts believe oil prices have moved too low, and the market is underpricing the risk of effectively running out of oil before the tanks can be replenished.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe market has jumped 7 steps ahead of where we are now,\u201d said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. \u201cEveryone\u2019s like: \u2018This is over!\u2019 But there\u2019s a major logistical challenge to get back to where we were.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Once the euphoria of the reopened strait ebbs, market fundamentals should eventually take over, sending oil prices higher again.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cRegardless of what happens in the coming weeks in the Strait of Hormuz, US consumers are in for higher prices in the summer months,\u201d said Matt Smith of Kpler. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t played out that way yet because of the optimism about a deal. But market forces have to come into play here.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The math checks out: Even if the global oil market started producing nearly 5 million more barrels supply than customers demanded \u2013 as the International Energy Agency predicts \u2013 it would take around a year to get back 1.15 billion barrels of lost supply.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAt some point physical barrels actually matter,\u201d said Dan Pickering. \u201cIf you lose those barrels, that matters.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But the market isn\u2019t always logical.\n <\/p>\n

\n Traders see the flood of oil about to come back online \u2013 particularly from cash-starved OPEC members eager to ramp up production. That new reality will make it very hard to change the oil market\u2019s momentum, argued Jay Hatfield, CEO of asset manager Infrastructure Capital Advisors.\n <\/p>\n

\n And perspective matters: The world was so flooded with oil going into the war that we\u2019re still somewhat insulated from the epic inventory depletion.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe had a lot of cushion, and we\u2019ve eaten through the cushion,\u201d Vikas Dwivedi, global oil and gas strategist at Macquarie Group. \u201cWe\u2019re below where we were before last year \u2013 but not by a lot.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n For example, US diesel stockpiles are at their lowest level since 2003, but they\u2019re down just 12.4% from their 5-year average. US gasoline stockpiles are down just 5% from where they were a year ago.\n <\/p>\n

\n The inventory risk is real, but oil bulls are giving the problem too much weight, Dwivedi argues.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf you\u2019re an oil trader at a refinery, and it\u2019s your job to get oil, you had to make 10 calls to get it during the crisis. Now you have to make 5-6 calls,\u201d said Dwivedi. \u201cIn the next few weeks, sellers are coming to you, saying, \u2018Hey I have oil, want to buy it?\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary The Strait of Hormuz has reopened after a nearly four-month closure, but global oil reserves are depleted.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-501955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}