Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has again been disrupted, exposing oil
markets to a supply shock similar to March’s outage that removed roughly 4 mln
bpd. An IMF blog on Wednesday says the March–May shortfall of about 4 mln bpd
was largely absorbed by drawing inventories. The IEA previously executed its
largest strategic release, putting roughly 400 mln barrels from emergency stocks
into the market, and other major consumers trimmed refinery runs and relied on
domestic stocks. IMF warns most of that shock absorber has been consumed;
without inventory replenishment the world will be more exposed to any subsequent
shock.
