London: Global oil inventories could reach critical levels ahead of the peak summer demand period if stock draws continue at their current pace, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
Toril Bosoni, Head of the Oil Industry and Markets Division at the IEA, said: "We're seeing stock draws continuing into the summer, and with the possibility or the likelihood that we reach critical levels or historical low levels just ahead of the peak summer demand".
She added, during the S&P Global Energy Middle East Petroleum and Gas Conference in London, that reopening the Strait of Hormuz could take, in the best-case scenario, six to eight months if an agreement were reached today.
She noted that this could make a further IEA-coordinated emergency stock release a possibility, but that is not currently being discussed because around half of the initial 400-million-barrel coordinated release from March has yet to reach the market.
She said: "In any case, emergency stock releases are only a temporary stop-gap measure; they're not going to solve this problem. The scale of the supply losses are so big that the reduction would have to come from the demand side".
