{"id":465059,"date":"2026-05-02T14:10:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T14:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/465059\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T14:10:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T14:10:37","slug":"europe-doesnt-know-how-much-fuel-it-has-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/465059\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe doesn\u2019t know how much fuel it has \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe\u2019s gas stocks, for a start, were already low before the attack on Iran, averaging under 30 percent of national capacity thanks to sharp drawdowns over the winter. Refilling those reserves depends on incentivizing traders, who generally prefer to pump gas into storage in the summer when prices fall, and sell in the winter when prices rise. But the Iran war risks inverting that dynamic, and EU efforts to resolve the problem have met a mixed reception<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rerouting of global energy markets that followed the blockage of Hormuz risks upending that dynamic further. Tankers are no longer being diverted to Asia from Europe but are simply steaming there directly from West Africa and the U.S., said Charles Costerousse, a natural gas analyst at market research firm Kpler.<\/p>\n

Deliveries are \u201cstill within the five-year average,\u201d he told POLITICO. \u201cIt\u2019s just that they are not getting as much as they could be getting, considering all the extra U.S. capacity coming online.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"When it comes to refined fuels like diesel and jet fuel, the picture is especially murky. | Olivier Chassignole\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Crude oil stocks can also be tracked in near-real time. Kpler, which supplies data to the IEA, assesses the fullness of floating-roof storage tanks by gauging the height of each tank’s roof, inferred by looking at the interplay of shadows in satellite imagery, said Homayoun Falakshahi, a crude oil analyst at the research firm. While storage facilities in China and some underground reserves in Europe can\u2019t be monitored this way, Kpler is able to capture around 90 percent of 6 billion barrels of global capacity using this method, he said.<\/p>\n

The IEA\u2019s most recent report<\/a> details that European inventories were already low in February compared to the year before, but it includes limited data for March. Energy ministries reportedly updated EU authorities on their own inventories<\/a> last week, but the details weren’t made public. Some countries are already releasing oil stocks<\/a> as part of an historic, multinational barrel release<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tracking jet fuel stocks \u2014 held primarily in fixed-roof tanks \u2014 is \u201cmuch more difficult,\u201d Falakshahi said. Data on the fuel is drawn largely from voluntary disclosures<\/a> by companies, and the lack of transparency is consistent with ongoing disagreements<\/a> over how much fuel Europe has left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s gas stocks, for a start, were already low before the attack on Iran, averaging under 30 percent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[8221,3084,26222,202435,2594,84726,356,18,7520,16524,440,20441,17920,19,18929,17,47616,9951,2374,118844,6144,133,29307,384,4894,177949],"class_list":["post-465059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-transport","tag-airlines","tag-airports","tag-anna-kaisa-itkonen","tag-data","tag-diesel","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-energy","tag-energy-markets","tag-environment","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fuels","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-plastics","tag-ports","tag-satellites","tag-science","tag-tanks","tag-united-states","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-war-in-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116505387384244297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}