04 May 2026

Time to start thinking about global oil reserves


I'm embedding a graphic I found in a May 2 Facebook post by Christian Decle (who apparently is a "digital creator.")  It's a slightly blurry probable screencap of a report from J.P. Morgan written by Natasha Kaneva last week.  I tried to track the original and found her on various J.P. Morgan web pages, but haven't seen the original report, which may have been distributed privately to clients.  

I've added two annotations of my own.  The first is a red arrow noting the point in the graph where the global oil inventory changes from current to projected future, extrapolated on the downward slope for the last couple months, and assuming the global drawdown stays unchanged at 5.5 million barrels per day (second annotation, circled).  I inserted the arrow because the color change from purple to green is subtle, and I wanted to note that the curent level is not critical - it is about the same as ten-year averages - but the steepness of the recent fall reflects an unprecedented severity of disruption and will quickly become critical if it continues.

This topic has been discussed repeatedly on the Bloomberg business televaion channel by hosts interviewing various specialists in business and economics.  Everyone wants to know what is going to happen, and there are a lot of assumptions that need to be made.

The author of the Facebook post concludes by saying "The UK has a fuel reserve buffer — measured in days."  I have no idea whether that is true.

But it is true that after Trump made the yet-unproven claim that the U.S. was escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran did launch some drone or missile attacks on the U.A.E., which damaged a refinery and threatens the U.A.E.'s route of bypassing the Strait via a pipeline to the Indian Ocean.  Brent crude is now back at highs, and no resolution is in sight.  

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