Also seems pretty doubtful that oil prices would drop even if the war ended, given that everyone is going to be scrambling to refill their reserves for a very long time. On top of that, a lot of wells have been capped, which is a destructive act, so it'll take years to repair the supply.
The real winners will be everyone who destroyed their own oil demand. I went out and bought an EV in May to replace an ICE vehicle, and the other car in the household hasn't burned through a full tank in the months since. They may have killed the EV subsidies in the US but they just went out and created a huge regressive tax on everyone not driving an EV.
Modern fuel blends are usually 10-15% ethanol. Ethanol is an alcohol, and thus is able to absorb ambient water from the air into the gasoline solution. Gasoline stored for a long time will generally increase in water content (if I am not mistaken lol), thus it maybe for future reference, try to avoid ethanol based fuels if possible if you're not gonna be using your ICE car. It's like how people who store their motorcycles or fancy performance cars during the winter leave it without fuel, or add a fuel stabilizer.
My gas car was filled in November and has half a tank. EV's are such a better experience and so much cheaper to operate[^1] that most owners don't want to go back to gas.
[1] - dependent on one's access to inexpensive electricity. In the U.S. using DC fast chargers is often more expensive than gasoline.
LOL, I sold my car and bought an e-bike.
So [EDIT: half] a year of reserves left at current rates and levels.
Isn't that the "180mn to 200mn barrels"?
If we're drawing it down by about 4 a week, that's about 25 weeks.
If it's really closer to the 180 needed to prevent collapse and hit unusable supply then it's 120mn barrels and we're at 30 weeks.
A year is 52 weeks.
That also is based on a massive assumption of constant draw rate. Something is probably going to change, who knows when. Maybe the war ends and things actually reopen soon. Maybe Iran manages to blow up Saudi pipelines avoiding the straight. Maybe China's SPR runs out (nobody knows what it's at) and international demand skyrockets again. Other reserves are likely to be eliminated soon as well, putting more international pressure.
I wouldn't have a clue what the rate will be in a month or two, but I can't imagine it'll be anywhere near the same as the past few weeks.
The operational minimums for commercial crude inventories are estimated at 300-380mn barrels, with current inventories at . Weekly draw rate this week was 7.2mn just for the commercial inventories, and levels were ~400mn barrels. So there's 20-100mn barrels remaining in the commercial inventory. Even moreso than the SPR, this is uneven, and maximum draw rates will decrease as individual storage reaches minimums.