Liam Denning, Columnist

The Oil Futures Market Is Lying to Us

April 24, 2026 at 9:00 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Nowhere to go.
Photographer: Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

The oil market, like nature, abhors a vacuum. It’s got one anyway, and a big one at that.

Roughly 15 million barrels a day of oil supply, 15% of global demand, are bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz. You can also think about that number as the total amount of oil that’s been drawn from global stockpiles to bridge the disruption: Roughly 500 million barrels so far, estimates Goldman Sachs Group Inc. At the current pace, that could hit a billion barrels by June, maybe even Memorial Day.