There’s not enough oil: why the US is forcing Europeans to tap into their fuel reserves

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Forbes on the current situation in the global oil market.

Shadow transit, which is virtually impossible to track, plays a significant role in supplies, notes Alexey Gromov. Small shuttle tankers, at their own risk, transfer oil across the strait at night with their transponders turned off; then the raw material is transferred to larger tankers, the expert explains. The reason is that the cost of chartering a supertanker capable of carrying 300,000–320,000 tons of oil has increased 20‑fold since last year, reaching $2 million, he says.

Satellite tracking of tankers shows that nearly 11 million barrels of oil per day were exported from Middle Eastern countries in September. However, he adds, this volume includes 1.7–1.8 million barrels per day of exports from the port of Fujairah outside the Strait of Hormuz. Currently, we can confidently say only about 9 million barrels per day are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which is less than 60% of pre‑war volumes.

“If supplies had fully recovered, there would be no talk about the need to release additional volumes from reserves, and the price of oil wouldn’t be stuck at $100 per barrel,” the expert explains.