Method

Every figure on this site is either copied from a published source or computed from such figures by one of the formulas below. Nothing is interpolated. A number that no source has published is shown as "not published".

Definitions

Term	Definition
Output (kb/d)	The current release rate. Measured from a published stock series where one exists (United States weekly, Japan quick estimates). Otherwise the announced programme volume divided by the programme's day count.
Wartime average (kb/d)	Stock fall between two readings divided by the days between them. The window is named on each row.
Runway to empty (days)	`latest_mb / (rate_kbd / 1000)`, counted from the latest reading's date. A month-only date means the last day of that month. Arithmetic, not a forecast.
Runway to floor (days)	`(latest_mb - floor_mb) / (rate_kbd / 1000)`. Only where a floor is published; otherwise "floor not published".
Cover (days)	Each country's own official measure: EU states report days of net imports under Directive 2009/119/EC (Eurostat); Japan reports Stockpiling Act days of domestic consumption; China's figure is Kpler's days of refinery needs.
US cover	SPR divided by net crude imports, using the Department of Energy's end-2025 ratio (411 mb = 125 days, i.e. 3.288 mb/d). Usable cover is `(SPR - 70) / 3.288`.
Realized global balance (mb/d)	The IEA's observed global stock change in a month divided by the days in that month. It includes oil on water, which swings hard.
Index	`value_mb / prewar_mb`, the reserve as a share of its pre-war level.
Exhaustion scenario	`pool_mb / deficit_mbd` days from the projection start, 1 November 2026. Pools: all IEA government stocks, 1,100 mb (IEA, 7 October 2026), and usable strategic stocks outside China and the Gulf, 400 mb (Sparta Commodities via Al Jazeera, 23 October 2026).

Conversions

Tonnes to barrels: 7.33 bbl/t, a crude-equivalent approximation. Volumes converted this way are labelled approximate.
Kilolitres and cubic metres to barrels: 6.2898.
Japan's consumption basis, derived from METI volumes and days: 279,300 kL/d, which is 1.7567 mb/d. One day of Japanese cover is therefore about 1.76 mb.

Rounding

Rates in kb/d and days of cover are rounded half up to a whole number.
Runway days are rounded down. A reserve is not empty until the whole day has passed. The date is the reading's date plus that many days.
Realized balances are rounded to two decimals; reserve levels in the tables to one.

One consequence worth stating: at 1.6 mb/d, China's 1,124 mb of onshore crude lasts 702.5 days. The brief this site was built from lists 703 days but gives the date 15 September 2028, which is 702 days after 14 October 2026. The site uses 702 and that date; both agree with rounding down.

Operating floors

The United States SPR has a minimum operating level of about 70 mb (Reuters, citing a Department of Energy source, 31 August 2026). The design drawdown rate is 4.415 mb/d, but the Government Accountability Office found effective capability at 61% of design as of December 2025, about 2.7 mb/d. The 252.4 mb statutory floor applies to limited drawdowns, not to the exchanges the department is using. No published floor was found for any other country, so their runways are to empty only.

Freshness

Each dataset shows the date of its newest figure. A dataset older than twice its normal publication cadence carries a stale marker. The United States weekly series is expected every Wednesday; Eurostat and METI monthly; everything else is refreshed from press and ministry sources on a weekly sweep.

What the automation may and may not do

Fetchers download the EIA weekly series, the Eurostat emergency-stock tables and METI's quick-estimate PDF into a dated folder, parse them in an isolated interpreter, and write normalized rows. A weekly review session reads the press and ministry sources listed on the sources page and may change a hand-entered figure only with a source URL, an as-of date and a quotation of fewer than fifteen words. Every build runs the full validation file before anything is published; a figure that moves more than the review thresholds (weekly SPR change over 10 mb, any stock change over 15%, any cover change over 15 days, any rate change over threefold) is held back for a human.

Freshness of each dataset

Dataset	Newest figure	Cadence (days)	Age at build (days)	Rows
headline	1 Nov 2026	31	-1	10
balance monthly	30 Sep 2026	31	31	13
forecast editions	31 Oct 2026	31	0	11
scenarios	23 Oct 2026	31	8	4
countries	27 Oct 2026	31	4	16
europe cover	30 Sep 2026	31	31	27
commercial cover	25 Oct 2026	45	6	12
series	27 Oct 2026	31	4	51
United States	23 Oct 2026	7	8	35
Japan	27 Oct 2026	31	4	9
South Korea	19 Oct 2026	60	12	3
China	14 Oct 2026	31	17	4