The world’s oil stockpiles are “scarily thin”, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco said, adding it would take up to two years to rebuild inventories depleted during the Middle East conflict.
Amin Nasser said the seven-month war between the US, Israel and Iran had reduced oil supply from the region by “nearly three billion barrels”, equivalent to roughly half the crude oil and refined fuels that would have passed through the Strait of Hormuz over that period.
More than one billion barrels of oil have been drawn from reserves to try to cushion the shortfall, Nasser added.
Governments have released more than 300 million barrels from strategic reserves and agreed on Friday to release more, but Nasser said the majority that have been deployed have come from the reserves of companies, which held “the last major tool in the box”.
READ MORE
In his first public speech since the war began, the boss of the state-run Saudi Arabian company said he estimated that “less than six billion barrels of commercial inventories remain today, with the vast majority not practically available”.
“The system is already straining,” he told the Energy Intelligence Forum conference in London. “And with precious little else the world can turn to, the supply resilience cushion is scarily thin.”
[ Catch up with all your Budget 2027 news and analysis hereOpens in new window ]
He added that modern technology, including “open data such as satellite imagery and shipping logs”, was “increasingly being weaponised against infrastructure and tankers”.
In recent weeks, Iran has hit ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz while its proxies in Iraq and Yemen have attacked Aramco’s pipelines, refineries and ports. “Tools of transparency should not become ammunition for aggression,” Nasser said.
His warnings underline the damage to the global oil market from the conflict, even as a complicated system of shuttling oil through Hormuz is helping to restore flows.
[ Budget Q&A: Submit your questions to our expert panel on budget dayOpens in new window ]
Shipments from Gulf countries rose to 15.5 million barrels a day last month, the highest level since the war began and more than 80 per cent of the pre-conflict volume, according to data provider Kpler.
However, these shipments have been hugely expensive, and oil markets remain extremely tight, with prices for physical North Sea crude cargoes to be delivered this month rising to their highest levels since April.
Nasser said that even at the end of the conflict, “replenishing inventories while meeting demand could take up to two years”, and called on governments to focus more on energy security and resilience.
Aramco was studying additional routes for exporting Saudi crude and exploring further overseas storage facilities to help protect customers against future disruptions, he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
