On Oct. 7, member governments of the International Energy Agency backed speeding up the oil stock releases they pledged under the agency’s March 2026 Collective Action, aiming to finish them as soon as possible. They also agreed to prioritize diesel, given how tight that market has become. According to Reuters, JPMorgan analysts read the move as an acceleration of barrels already promised, not a fresh intervention.

The March action was historic on its own. In response to the Iran war and the disruption of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, IEA members agreed to make 400 million barrels of oil available to the market. It was only the sixth collective action since the agency’s founding in 1974, and by far the largest.

Seven months later, the buffer is visibly thinner. IEA governments still hold roughly 1.1 billion barrels of publicly held emergency stocks, including more than 200 million barrels of diesel, the agency says. In March, that figure was more than 1.2 billion barrels. Including company inventories, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser estimated this week that more than 1 billion barrels have been pulled from stockpiles worldwide.

The G7 steps in

The IEA’s move followed an Oct. 2 videoconference of G7 leaders convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. In a joint statement, leaders said they had agreed on coordinated measures to “stabilize immediate energy supplies, shield households and businesses from price shocks.”

The core of the plan is a coordinated release of 100 million barrels through the IEA over four months, with a large share of diesel front-loaded into the first 20 days. The G7 also pledged to stagger refinery maintenance so plants don’t go offline at the same time. Members said they would push refiners to run harder where feasible and encourage countries with significant refining capacity to boost diesel output. They also reaffirmed that they would not restrict energy exports among themselves.

Diesel is the pressure point. Damage to refineries and disrupted shipping from the wars in Iran and Ukraine have pushed diesel to record highs in many markets, feeding directly into trucking, farming, and freight costs. On Sunday, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol wrote to member governments ahead of the agency’s Oct. 15 Governing Board meeting. He urged all of them, including those that have already completed their pledged releases, to consider whether more diesel needs to come out of storage.

America’s reserve is running low and getting old

In the U.S., the strain is showing in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Trump administration began a 172 million-barrel emergency release in March as its share of the IEA effort. The SPR has since fallen to about 284 million barrels, its lowest level since 1982, and is on track to drop to roughly 243 million once the final barrels are delivered. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has warned that drawing the reserve down too far could damage the salt caverns where the oil is stored. That is a sharp reversal from the administration’s earlier pledge to refill the SPR “right to the top.”

A report from the Government Accountability Office, published in May and released publicly in June, suggests the problems run deeper than inventory levels. GAO found that DOE has released more than 500 million barrels of crude from the SPR since 1985, more than half for emergencies such as wars. Nearly 70% of all releases occurred between 2014 and 2025. Before this year, the largest drawdown on record was the 180 million-barrel emergency sale in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

That pace has collided with aging infrastructure. GAO found that investment in the reserve isn’t keeping up with its needs, leaving a growing maintenance backlog. DOE itself has warned that aging equipment will increasingly limit the SPR’s ability to carry out fill or drawdown orders.

The bigger gap, GAO argues, is strategic. DOE hasn’t completed a long-term review of the SPR since 2016, and Congress has never set a target size.

“Without an updated long-term plan or target size for the SPR, DOE and Congress are making operational and investment decisions amidst uncertainty about what the SPR is capable of at present, what it should be capable of in the future to meet changing U.S. needs and obligations, and what investments and other actions may be required to bridge any gaps,” the report states.

GAO urged Congress to require DOE to complete long-term SPR plans on a set timeline. It also recommended that DOE reassess the technical criteria governing how fast the reserve can be drawn down and refilled. DOE concurred with the recommendations.

What happens next

Under IEA rules, member countries must hold oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net imports. Net exporters are exempt. Governments have wide latitude in how they meet that obligation, using some mix of government-held reserves, dedicated stockholding agencies, and stocks that industry is required to keep.

The harder question is how and when those stocks get rebuilt. The G7 asked the IEA to deliver a follow-up report within 20 days with recommendations to improve future responses, including how to replenish stocks. IEA governments will review the situation again at the Oct. 15 Governing Board meeting.

Refilling won’t be cheap or quick. Analysts have noted that governments rebuilding their reserves after the war, possibly to levels above where they stood before it, would create a new layer of oil demand on top of normal consumption. That could keep prices elevated long after the shooting stops.

For now, governments are leaning on a cushion they’ve already worn thin. As the IEA put it, it stands ready to release more “if and when required.” The question is how much is left to give.