Global Oil Data Deck (April 2026)
Balances tightened further through February before the onset of the Iran War; the >1 billion barrels of now guaranteed supply loss will prompt an unprecedented draw on global inventories.
This 73-page April 2026 edition of my monthly data-dense and visualization-heavy Global Oil Data Deck series (attached PDF below) is exclusive to paid Commodity Context subscribers.
In addition to our regular monthly tracking, this edition of the Global Oil Data Deck also explores some contextual analysis of how the roughly one billion barrels of guaranteed supply loss fits into the total pool of stocks and, more importantly, the far smaller pool of accessible commercial inventories.
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Overview
The global liquids market continued to tighten through February, falling to the least oversupplied level since last June at the peak of summer demand. This was already tighter than most had expected the oil market to be in Q1, and leaves the global oil market in an even more precarious position than would have been anticipated heading into the Iran War, the stoppage of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and the largest supply shock in the oil market’s history.
Iran War Inventory Impacts
At this stage of the Iran War, we have already, more or less, guaranteed a net loss of roughly 1 billion barrels of unproduced Middle Eastern barrels that we would have otherwise been expected to be produced this year. And, with the latest reporting indicating that the White House is leaning toward an even longer blockade of Hormuz, that number could turn out to be much, much larger.
I’m often asked how big that supply loss is in the scheme of the oil market: it obviously sounds large but is it really that big if the global market is already holding ~8.2 billion barrels of stocks (discussed in more detail below)? The answer is absolutely yes—though the distribution of impacts across those stocks will ultimately have the biggest effect on the pricing impact.
[Full discussion of the impact of Iran War supply losses on global stocks and inventories as well as the entire regular monthly update of the Global Oil Data Deck—72-page PDF report on market supply and demand fundamentals—and flow-level analysis available for subscribers below the paywall]