1. How many days of oil does each EU country hold?
Finland tops our table with 178.0 days and Denmark sits at the bottom with 63.3: of the 16 EU countries shown, nine held more than 90 days in the latest Eurostat month (June to September 2026, depending on the country) and seven held fewer. Eurostat expresses each country's emergency stock as “days equivalent” of the base set by EU Directive 2009/119/EC, the larger of 90 days of average daily net imports or 61 days of inland consumption in a reference year. Pledges to the IEA release agreed in March are in the right-hand column.
| Country | Days in March 2026 (before the release) | Days, latest | Period | IEA contribution 2026 (mb) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | 95.2 | 97.1 | August 2026 | 19.5 |
| France | 94.5 | 96.5 | August 2026 | 14.6 |
| Spain | 98.7 | 104.8 | August 2026 | 11.6 |
| Italy | 90.2 | 77.2 | August 2026 | 10.0 |
| Netherlands | 96.4 | 80.4 | July 2026 | 5.4 |
| Belgium | 107.8 | 106.3 | August 2026 | 0.3 |
| Austria | 90.9 | 89.0 | September 2026 | 2.4 |
| Poland | 91.5 | 90.5 | July 2026 | 7.5 |
| Portugal | 91.8 | 87.1 | July 2026 | 2.0 |
| Ireland | 86.5 | 83.1 | August 2026 | 1.7 |
| Sweden | 112.8 | 108.2 | July 2026 | 2.1 |
| Finland | 190.3 | 178.0 | September 2026 | 1.8 |
| Denmark | 72.7 | 63.3 | September 2026 | 1.2 |
| Czechia | 88.6 | 84.4 | August 2026 | 2.2 |
| Greece | 105.7 | 101.8 | June 2026 | 2.0 |
| Hungary | 44.4* | 90.2 | August 2026 | 6.1 |
* March value of 44.4 days as published by Eurostat, cause not documented.
Download the table as CSV (UTF-8, source per row)
The path since March has not been a straight line down. Germany fell from 95.2 days in March to 91.7 in June and was back at 97.1 in August; France went from 94.5 to 87.9 in June and 96.5 in August; Eurostat gives no reason for the rebound. Italy, by contrast, dropped to 77.2 days in August (89.7 in June) and the Netherlands to 80.4 in July. Germany has temporarily cut its obligation from 90 to 82 days since 16 October (Reuters). Denmark was already below 90 days before the war, at 72.8 in December 2025, and Eurostat gives no reason. Dropping below 90 is something the Directive explicitly allows for: member states may go under the minimum in cases of particular urgency (Art. 20(5)), and the European Commission then sets a “reasonable” time frame to rebuild (Art. 20(6)). We have found no 2026 deadline.
2. What about the US, the UK, Japan and Switzerland?
There is no common yardstick outside the EU: in the week to 23 October 2026 the US SPR held 282.6 million barrels, Japan reported 200 days under its own law for 30 October, the UK held 10.2 million tonnes at the end of March, and Switzerland counts in months. None of these can be set against the Eurostat days, so they sit in a separate table.
| Country | Stock, in that country's own measure | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 282.6 million barrels in the SPR | week to 23 Oct 2026 | EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report (28 Oct 2026) |
| Japan | 200 days (state 101, private 94, producer-joint 5), Japanese Stockpiling Act basis | 30 Oct 2026 | METI/ANRE quick estimate of 2 Nov 2026 |
| United Kingdom | 10.2 million tonnes, which the government says is “more than meeting” the IEA's 90 days of net imports; no exact day count published | end of Q1 2026 | DESNZ, Energy Trends June 2026 |
| Switzerland | targets of 4.5 months for petrol, diesel and heating oil and 3 months for jet fuel; jet fuel about 76 days on 21 Sep; since 23 Oct up to 45,000 m³ of diesel may be drawn from compulsory stocks (just under 4% of the diesel stock) | 23 Oct 2026 | BWL, supply situation (21 Sep) and release of 23 Oct 2026 |
| South Korea | 100 million barrels of government stocks held by KNOC (excluding joint-stockpiling volumes); storage capacity 146 million barrels | 31 Aug 2026 | KNOC |
| India | 3.372 million tonnes of crude in the strategic reserve, about 64% of capacity; when full it would cover about 9.5 days | 23 Mar 2026 | government reply in the Rajya Sabha via Business Standard |
| China | no official data; the EIA estimated crude inventories at nearly 1.4 billion barrels, about 360 million of it government-held | Dec 2025 | EIA, Today in Energy (20 Apr 2026) |
The US SPR fell week by week through the summer, from 298.7 million barrels in the week to 7 August to 285.0 million in the week to 11 September, and has barely moved since: 282.6 million in the week to 23 October (EIA). On 29 October the Department of Energy said its 172 million barrel release was fully awarded and that more than 216 million barrels will flow back from early 2027 (DOE). The US pledged 172.2 million barrels to the IEA action, by far the largest single share (IEA). How the exchanges work and when barrels are due back is covered on our US Strategic Petroleum Reserve level page.
The UK has no government stockpile and no central stockholding agency. Instead, companies supplying more than 50,000 tonnes a year must hold 67.5 days of domestic net consumption (61 days plus 10 per cent), at least 22 days of it as finished products (IEA). DESNZ reported 10.2 million tonnes at the end of the first quarter of 2026, which it says is “more than meeting” the IEA's 90-day requirement, but it gives no day count. The details are on United Kingdom: the stocking obligation.
3. What has changed since March 2026?
Since the IEA agreed on 11 March 2026 to make 400 million barrels available, member countries have released around 330 million barrels, and on 15 October the IEA Governing Board agreed to speed up the remaining 100 million or so, including more than 20 million barrels of diesel (IEA). The big stockpiles outside Europe have shrunk visibly. Everything follows from the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran's Revolutionary Guards closed on 2 March; after a partial reopening from 18 June to 5 July it was shut again on 11 July (Wikipedia timeline). On 19 March the IEA confirmed pledges of 426 million barrels: 280 million from public stocks, 119 million from obligated industry stocks and 28 million from extra production. The largest shares came from the US (172.2 million), Japan (79.8), Canada (23.6, by producing more), South Korea (22.5) and Germany (19.5). The UK appears in the IEA table with 14.0 million barrels from industry stocks; the government had announced 13.5 million in a written statement to Parliament on 12 March. Europe had released 63 million barrels from emergency reserves by July, according to S&P Global. On 29 October twelve EU countries committed to release a further 42.6 million barrels by the end of January 2027, 20.5 million of it diesel, as part of the March action (joint declaration); ministers will review progress on 10 December.
The stock figures show the cost. Reuters put the US SPR at its lowest since 1982 in mid-September, and Japan reports 200 days of stocks on 30 October, down from 242 days on 14 March (METI). At the same time the IEA says its members still held more than 1 billion barrels of government-controlled stocks in July, so the system is drawn down, not empty.
4. What does this mean for your heating oil and diesel?
For heating oil and diesel, refined products are what count, and they were the smaller part of the IEA pledge: of the 426 million barrels confirmed on 19 March 2026, 125 million were products and 301 million crude. Emergency stocks also exist to bridge a physical supply gap, not to hold prices down: the IEA says releases are meant “to mitigate the negative economic impacts of a supply shock, and not as a tool to manage prices”. That distinction matters for your heating oil bill.
What reaches your tank is a product, not crude. In Europe the contributions were to “primarily take the form of refined oil products” (IEA, 19 March). The US share was all crude, which has to go through a refinery before it becomes heating oil or diesel, so it does not help directly when the bottleneck is refining capacity. Our diesel and jet fuel stocks page shows how much road diesel, heating gasoil and jet fuel Germany, France, Spain and Austria hold.
For your own planning, the heating oil tank calculator estimates how many days your current fill will last, and Heating oil: buy now or wait? sets out the arguments on timing for US households. We do not give buying advice.
5. How do we count, and how often do we update?
The EU day counts here come from Eurostat's release of 4 November 2026, which runs to June, July, August or September 2026 depending on the country; every other figure keeps its publisher's unit and date, and we do not extrapolate. Austria, Finland and Denmark already report September, Greece only June; Eurostat publishes emergency stocks monthly, but with a lag. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports the SPR level weekly; the figure for the week to 23 October came out on Wednesday 28 October, and the next is due on 5 November. The IEA refreshes its country data, in days of net imports, with each monthly Oil Market Report; the next is due on 13 November. Japan's METI publishes provisional quick estimates.
Three zero readings carry no flag in Eurostat's data (Netherlands April 2026, Finland May 2026, Czechia September 2026): we treat them as missing values, not empty tanks, which is why Czechia appears with its August figure. Why the same barrels give different day counts is explained on How it is counted: the 90-day rule.
How to cite: Global Oil Shock (Jörg Dässler), “Strategic Oil Reserves by Country 2026: Days of Cover”, as of 4 Nov 2026, https://globaloilshock.com/en/strategic-oil-reserves/