Global Oil Inventory Levels — US Crude, SPR & OECD Days of Cover

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 built a further 4.4 Mbbl to 428.8 Mbbl for the week ending August 14, 2026 (EIA, released Aug 19) — a second consecutive weekly build, following the prior week's surprising 17.4 Mbbl surge to 424.4 Mbbl (the largest weekly increase since January 2023). Reuters framed the latest build as easing concerns about tight supplies. Refinery utilization rose a point to 97.2% of operable capacity, with refiners chasing high margins as Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining keep global fuel supply tight. But the barrel is splitting: gasoline built 0.7 Mbbl to 209.4 Mbbl (production up to 9.7 Mbbl/day), while distillate drew 1.5 Mbbl to 105.7 Mbbl — its lowest level in more than a month, and now 13% below the five-year average, the tightest part of the barrel. Total products supplied, a proxy for US demand, averaged 20.5 Mbbl/day over the last four weeks, down 2.9% year-on-year. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has carried much of the strain throughout the war and moved the other way: DOE data released Aug 10 shows it fell 6.1 Mbbl to 298.7 Mbbl as of Aug 12, crossing below 300 Mbbl for the first time since January 1983 (~41.8% of the 714 Mbbl authorized capacity, down ~116.7 Mbbl since the Feb 28 war start) -- this is a fresher, better-sourced read that corrects this page's previously carried-forward 304.8 Mbbl figure, not a further draw from it. The drawdown traces to the 172 Mbbl exchange-structured release Trump ordered in March (companies borrow crude, must return the same volume plus a premium later); a DOE spokesperson told CNBC the reserve's safe operating minimum is roughly 70 Mbbl, distinct from the oft-cited 252.4 Mbbl statutory threshold that restricts certain limited drawdowns. Refined products moved with the commercial-crude build: gasoline drew 0.968 Mbbl to 208.7 Mbbl (~6% below the 5-yr average); distillate was little changed at 107.2 Mbbl (~12% below the 5-yr average). That sits against a Hormuz backdrop that remains genuinely unresolved: the UAE explicitly blamed Iran for attacks on two ADNOC-affiliated vessels transiting Hormuz, and Treasury Secretary Bessent said the US will pursue "economic isolation" measures against Iran "the likes of which have never been seen." Brent settled Friday at $88.52, up more than 5% for the week.

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.

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.