Oil inventories in the west have been exhausted, Vitol CEO says
Group of Seven nations preparing to release 100M barrels of emergency oil reserves
Oil inventories in western countries have been exhausted as a result of the Iran war, the boss of the world’s largest independent oil trader said, warning that fuel markets are likely to remain tight going into winter.
“There aren’t any more inventories to drain in the West,” Russell Hardy, chief executive officer of Vitol Group, said at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London on Tuesday. “We drained the available inventory.”
The Group of Seven nations and its partners announced on Friday that they would release 100 million barrels of emergency oil reserves after the Trump administration piled pressure on Europe to do more to quell soaring diesel prices. Hardy said the precise details of that release were “not fully transparent.”
Hardy’s comments come a day after the chief executive officer of Saudi Aramco warned that less than 10% of the world’s 6 billion-barrel oil stockpile is practically available because of various logistics challenges.
Hardy also warned that a tight fuels market is likely to persist in the coming months.
“Products are still in a very, very tight situation and that will probably roll forward for a little bit longer as we go through winter,” he said.
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