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 418.2 million barrels (excluding the SPR) — roughly 6% below the 5-year average — while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to 340.3 million barrels, its lowest since 1983. Both are drawing down as the Strait of Hormuz crisis, now in its fourth month, squeezes crude supply and forces refiners and the government to pull from stock. 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 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 June 12). 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 roughly 32 million barrels over the following weeks to about 418.2 Mbbl — counter-seasonal at a time of year when stocks normally build. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has carried much of the strain: at 340.3 Mbbl it is the lowest since August 1983 — below the 2023 Biden-era low — after an 8.9-Mbbl draw on the week. Gasoline and distillate inventories remain well below the 5-year range, ~6% and ~13% under respectively, both now well below the 5-year range — the inventory signature of refiners working hard to cover demand the disrupted crude market can no longer supply comfortably.
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. 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.