Ranked: The World’s Largest Oil Stockpiles

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Global strategic oil inventories are one of the clearest indicators of how countries prepare for energy shocks and geopolitical uncertainty. These strategic reserves help governments stabilize domestic fuel supplies during wars, sanctions, natural disasters, or market disruptions.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world is currently facing one of the largest energy supply disruptions in modern history following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has placed extreme strain on fuel markets and gasoline prices worldwide.

This visualization shows the largest estimated current strategic oil inventories in on-land storage using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It highlights which countries were most prepared to weather disruptions to global oil supply.

The data does not account for the coordinated emergency release in March 2026 by IEA member countries.

China’s Massive Oil Inventory Dominates the Rankings

China’s oil stockpile is the standout figure in the ranking.

At an estimated 1.4 billion barrels, it is larger than the combined strategic inventories of the U.S., Japan, OECD Europe, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Iran, the UAE, and India.

Rank	Country/Region	Est. Strategic Crude Oil Inventories, Dec 2025 (million bbl)
1	China	1,397
2	U.S.	413
3	Japan	263
4	OECD Europe	179
5	Saudi Arabia	82
6	South Korea	79
7	Iran	71
8	UAE	34
9	India	21

Today, the combined inventory of the countries listed above accounts for about 70% of the world’s total volume of oil in storage.

The scale of China’s reserve reflects its high dependency on overseas supply routes, including strategically sensitive maritime corridors like the Strait of Hormuz. The larger the stockpile, the more flexibility countries have to navigate periods of market volatility.

The U.S. Has the Second-Largest Stockpile of Crude Oil

The United States ranks second with 413 million barrels in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a network of underground salt caverns created after the 1973 oil embargo.

Japan ranks third with 263 million barrels, despite having limited domestic energy resources. Because the country imports nearly all of its crude oil, maintaining large emergency reserves has long been a national priority.

The collective of European countries in the OECD has the fourth-largest crude oil stockpile, at 179 million barrels.

Several Middle Eastern and other Asian countries also maintain sizable strategic reserves, highlighting the growing importance of energy security across both importing and exporting nations.

As global oil demand and geopolitical tensions persist, many countries are continuing to expand storage capacity to better protect against future supply disruptions.

A History of Oil Shocks and Strategic Releases

The 1973–1974 oil crisis, brought on by a global embargo of oil by major producers, caused global oil prices to spike by 300%. The crisis exposed how vulnerable many industrialized nations were to disruptions in oil imports.

In response, the IEA was created with one of its main goals being to establish strategic oil stockpiles in member countries to reduce the impact of future supply disruptions.

Since 1974, there have been six strategic oil releases:

• 1991: in the build-up to the Gulf War.
• 2005: after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.
• 2011: in response to the prolonged disruption of oil supply caused by the Libyan Civil War.
• 2022: following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• 2022: a second release later that year as the energy crisis deepened.
• 2026 (the largest so far): following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

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The top note in a new perfume called Miami Split comes from an unexpected place: a banana processing plant in Ecuador. The fragrance is extracted from banana-scented water, a byproduct of washing fruit, that was previously thrown away.

It’s one of the unusual ingredients sourced by Abel Fragrance, a company that avoids using any fossil fuels in its products. Instead, it is looking to biotech to make natural fragrances. Right now, petrochemicals are the status quo in the industry.

“Almost all fragrance molecules are synthesized from fossil fuels,” says Frances Shoemack, the brand’s founder. A typical fragrance is made from between a dozen and a few hundred fragrance molecules and more than 95% of those come from crude oil. “They’re cheap and readily scalable, and it’s really what’s kind of created the modern fragrance world,” she adds.

The quest for a natural perfume

Shoemack, a former winemaker originally from New Zealand, started Abel Fragrance in 2013 after a move to Amsterdam. At the time, she saw natural, more sustainable options for skincare and makeup, but nothing comparable for perfume. “It just started out as a bit of a real search for this product,” she says. “And then a little bit of like, if no one’s doing it, is it something I could do if I find the right people to surround myself with?”

She partnered with the master perfumer Isaac Sinclair and initially worked only with essential oils, but quickly ran into limitations. Many aren’t long-lasting, and dissipate within hours. They’re difficult to make shelf-stable, without synthetic preservatives like sunscreen. They’re expensive. They’re complex compounds, making them harder to work with in a precise way. The startup team wanted to rethink how natural fragrances are made. Their theory: it should be possible to compete with fossil-based fragrances on performance.

A biotech answer

As Shoemack and Sinclair looked at innovation happening in other sectors like food production, they started to find biotech versions of fragrance ingredients. Ambroxin, for example, is a molecule that’s typically made from fossil fuels to replicate ambergris—a rare natural substance that was originally sourced from whales for its warm, woody scent and ability to act as a fixative in perfume. Now, it can also be made in a lab by fermenting plant sugars. The chemical structure of the resulting molecule is the same as the fossil fuel version, but only plants are involved.

Right now, Shoemack estimates that there are only around 100 biotech fragrance molecules on the market, compared to thousands of fossil-based molecules that are available. “It’s still expensive, and it’s still early days,” she says. As the war in Iran has pushed up the price of crude oil, though, “that might spur some innovation in this space.”

Abel Fragrance also works with isolates—compounds that are extracted and purified from complex mixtures like lavender oil or peppermint oil. And it searches for other unique natural fragrances, like the banana note, which is produced by a company called Symrise. The company developed a low-energy process to extract scents from water, making it possible to have natural fruit scents, like cherry and passionfruit, that couldn’t be made in the past.

That natural banana scent isn’t something that could easily be reproduced synthetically. “It’s green and tart and almost kind of pithy, like when you peel back the banana layers,” says Shoemack. “It’s so different to the banana candy note that’s otherwise available.”

More creative fragrances

Beyond being more sustainable to produce, it also allows more creativity, she says, since the scent wasn’t otherwise available. “This [scent] literally started with that banana note, like, wow, this is radical,” she says. “How can we make this into a fragrance that is really interesting, exciting, boundary-pushing? It’s this dark, edgy oud fragrance, as opposed to what you would expect, which is bright, creamy, sunny, vanilla-y.”

The company also still uses some traditional natural scents, like Atlas Mountain cedarwood, which is harvested from the wild by communities in Morocco. It plans to always use a mix of certain heritage ingredients alongside biotech ingredients that help with longevity and other factors.

Technology is at a point now where a bigger shift in the industry could be possible. While the cost of biotech ingredients still needs to come down, “the trajectory is there, and the big players know it,” Shoemack says. “They’re watching this space closely, and from what I can see, the intent to transition is genuine. This isn’t a fringe conversation anymore.”

“Biotech is to fragrance what EVs were to the car industry; a fundamental rethinking of where the raw material comes from, and proof that the alternative can actually be better,” she adds. “Not a compromise. Better. That shift in the conversation is enormous. Abel isn’t positioned as a proof of concept, but nor was the goal to be niche for niche’s sake. We’re paving a path forward and I hope the industry will follow suit.”

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