The EU does not have a complete picture of fuel stocks, while the crisis in Iran adds to the risk of energy shortages and instability in markets.

At a time of intense geopolitical instability and increased pressure on global energy markets, the European Union is facing a critical information gap regarding real levels of its fuel reserves, Politico reports. Despite existing monitoring mechanisms and strategic stocks maintained by member states, the lack of timely and aggregated data from the private sector creates a fuzzy picture, making it difficult to plan and predict potential shortages. At the same time, the impact of international tensions and the turbulence in oil and gas flows add to the uncertainty, making the need for a more comprehensive and immediate energy monitoring system at the European level even more urgent.

As airlines begin grounding their planes and European officials encourage people to cut back on their travel, the EU’s attempt to avert shortages caused by the war in Iran faces an unexpected technical obstacle: No one knows how much fuel the Old Continent actually has.

Conflict Costs

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has estimated that the conflict is costing the EU nearly €500 million a day due to higher energy costs, while US President Donald Trump warns of a prolonged blockade of Iran that could further disrupt global energy markets.

“In Europe, we are aware of the situation and the commitments that are in place for May and June… what happens after that is hard to predict,” said Tobias Meyer, chief executive of transport services group DHL. “There are strategic stocks, but at the moment it is not clear how much has already been used up.”

EU authorities are not completely in the dark. Information on the oil and gas reserves held by countries is generally transparent and up to date, and relevant government officials hold regular information-sharing meetings.

The Plan

But beyond that, European officials who want to know when the taps might run dry have very little to say. It’s a blind spot that threatens to leave them unable to spot shortages or force them to make emergency decisions based on incomplete information.

At a high-level summit last month, ministers from Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain drew attention to these information gaps, urging the EU to coordinate more real-time monitoring and analysis, especially for refined products. The representative of Greece even asked the Commission to create a relevant WhatsApp or Signal channel between member states and the EU executive.

For refined products such as diesel and jet fuels in particular, the picture is particularly blurred. The EU relies mainly on its official statistical agency, Eurostat, and coordination meetings with member states to measure supply levels.

However, most stocks are in scattered commercial stocks covering various sectors, with companies reluctant to disclose sensitive business data that they are not legally obliged to report.

Even the data provided by the International Energy Agency – which coordinated the historic release of 400 million barrels of oil last month – is necessarily limited for the same reason, a commission official said.

“We don’t really know”

Since the war began, energy ministers have called on the European Commission to boost the bloc’s ability to assess reserves held across the continent in underground facilities, in tanks or in huge supertankers off European shores.

The commission itself has acknowledged the lack of information, unveiling plans for a “Fuel Observatory” earlier this month that would “monitor production, imports, exports and stock levels of transport fuels in the EU” – like the US Energy Information Administration .

“Of course, we want to have a better picture of the fuel situation across the EU,” said Commission spokeswoman Anna-Keisha Itkonen. “We are working on it, but it is too early to say now how it will work.”

Eurostat monitors oil products across Europe, but updates are infrequent and sporadic. Its last fairly comprehensive data set is from January, according to Anna Maria Jaller Makarevich, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

At the time, most EU countries – except Latvia, Ireland and Cyprus – met the bloc’s requirements to hold at least 90 days’ worth of oil and oil derivatives stocks. Stocks consisted mainly of crude oil and diesel, with less gasoline and jet fuel.

“It’s quite difficult to have an up-to-date overview,” a senior European Energy Department official told POLITICO. “We know that private companies should have in stock. But what they have at any given time is something we can’t really know. It’s information they don’t want to share.”

Despite the deep data gaps, it’s not clear whether the Commission will eventually adopt rules requiring countries to inform it.

Signs of concern

What is known is not particularly reassuring. Europe’s gas reserves, for one thing, were already low before the Iran attack, averaging less than 30% of national capacity due to steep declines over the winter.

Replacing these reserves depends on providing incentives to traders, who generally prefer to store gas in tanks in the summer, when prices fall, and sell in the winter, when prices rise. But the war in Iran risks upsetting this dynamic, and EU efforts to resolve the problem have been met with conflicting reactions.

The rerouting of global energy market flows after the closure of Hormuz risks further reversing this dynamic. Tankers are no longer diverted to Asia from Europe, but simply headed there directly from West Africa and the US.

Energy ministries in EU member states reportedly briefed the commission on their stocks last week, but the details were not made public.