1. How much of Europe's oil comes straight from the Gulf?
In 2025 the seven Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran, supplied 13.2% of the crude oil, diesel and jet fuel imported by EU countries; between April and June 2026 they supplied 7.6% (own calculation from Eurostat partner-country data). The EU-wide figure hides wide gaps. Lithuania (45.2%), Greece (42.5%) and Poland (37.0%) lead, almost entirely through crude from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. France (20.1%) is exposed through refined products rather than crude: 59.8% of its jet fuel and 33.2% of its diesel and heating oil came from the Gulf, against 10.1% of its crude. Italy stands at 16.1%, with 55.8% of its diesel from the Gulf, and Spain at 11.7%, with 45.6% of its jet fuel. Germany sits near the bottom at 6.0%: 6.3% for crude, 7.2% for diesel and heating oil and 0.0% for jet fuel bought directly.
Where do the US and UK stand? Neither is in the Eurostat data, but official statistics allow a comparison. Our seven-country group matches the “Persian Gulf” category of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA): in 2025 the United States imported 178,700 thousand barrels of crude from the region, 7.9% of its 2,251,381 thousand barrels of crude imports, while 63.4% came from Canada (own calculation from EIA data). The EIA series covers crude only, in barrels; the index covers three products by weight, so treat the two as related, not identical. In the United Kingdom, Kuwait was the main source of imported jet fuel in 2025 with 35%, or 3.7 million tonnes, and the third-largest source of all product imports with 13%, according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ, DUKES 2026). On jet fuel the UK therefore looks more like France, which took 43.9% of its jet fuel imports from Kuwait, than like Germany. The full supplier picture for both countries is on Where UK and US oil comes from.
2. Which EU countries rely most on Gulf oil? The full ranking
Lithuania (45.2%), Greece (42.5%) and Poland (37.0%) took more than a third of their imports from the Gulf in 2025; Ireland, at the bottom, reported no direct Gulf imports at all. A few notes before the numbers:
- The first row is the sum of all national reports (EU-27), followed by 19 EU countries sorted by their 2025 Gulf share.
- The column “of which no bypass route” is the part that came from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran; the next column covers April to June 2026.
- Every share is by weight in tonnes, and “0.0%” means Eurostat records no direct deliveries from the seven states.
| Country | Gulf share 2025 | of which no bypass route | Gulf share Q2 2026 | Crude 2025 | Diesel/heating oil 2025 | Jet fuel 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EU-27 | 13.2% | 1.4% | 7.6% | 12.4% | 12.1% | 29.5% |
| Lithuania | 45.2% | 0.0% | 33.4% | 46.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Greece | 42.5% | 0.6% | 22.3% | 43.6% | 17.3% | 52.7% |
| Poland | 37.0% | 0.0% | 33.4% | 47.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| France | 20.1% | 4.8% | 6.2% | 10.1% | 33.2% | 59.8% |
| Italy | 16.1% | 0.5% | 12.2% | 12.4% | 55.8% | 15.2% |
| Spain | 11.7% | 1.5% | 5.1% | 10.7% | 9.4% | 45.6% |
| Austria | 10.8% | 0.0% | 1.2% | 16.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Netherlands | 10.7% | 2.5% | 0.9% | 9.1% | 1.8% | 47.1% |
| Czechia | 7.1% | 0.0% | 22.8% | 10.6% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Germany | 6.0% | 0.5% | 2.8% | 6.3% | 7.2% | 0.0% |
| Slovakia | 5.7% | 0.0% | 2.9% | 7.6% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Romania | 5.1% | 0.7% | 15.8% | 0.5% | 22.9% | 0.0% |
| Denmark | 4.6% | 2.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 45.7% |
| Belgium | 4.6% | 1.0% | 1.2% | 3.0% | 8.9% | 14.3% |
| Hungary | 4.2% | 0.1% | 19.0% | 0.0% | 10.3% | 1.2% |
| Portugal | 2.7% | 2.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 51.3% |
| Sweden | 1.0% | 0.8% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 3.5% | 13.7% |
| Bulgaria | 0.9% | 0.5% | 1.1% | 0.0% | 6.0% | 0.0% |
| Ireland | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Download the GOS Hormuz Index as CSV (UTF-8, volumes by country, product and period)
In three countries the share rose sharply in 2026: Romania (from 5.1% to 15.8%), Hungary (4.2% to 19.0%) and, most of all, Czechia (7.1% to 22.8%). Eurostat's figures come without explanations. Where import volumes are small, one cargo more or less can swing the share, so the tonnes in the CSV are worth a look before drawing conclusions. The suppliers behind each percentage, with volumes, are on Oil imports by country of origin.
3. How is the Hormuz Exposure Index calculated?
Index = imports from seven Gulf states ÷ total imports, both in thousand tonnes and summed over crude oil, gas oil/diesel including heating oil, and jet fuel. Worked through for the EU-27 sum in 2025: 78,182.5 ÷ 590,404.0 thousand tonnes = 13.2% (own calculation). The seven are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran, the same set as the EIA's “Persian Gulf” group; Oman is left out on purpose because its export ports lie outside the strait.
A second figure, the core share, keeps only Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran, the suppliers with no export route around the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia can divert part of its oil through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, the UAE through a pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, and Iraq through its northern exports via Ceyhan in Turkey. Estimates of that bypass capacity differ: the International Energy Agency (IEA) puts available capacity to export crude out of the Gulf on alternative routes at 3.5 to 5.5 mb/d, while the EIA counts only the Saudi and Emirati pipelines and arrives at about 2.6 million b/d. For scale, nearly 20 mb/d passed through the strait in 2025 (IEA).
What the index cannot show:
- Indirect exposure. Eurostat records the country that ships the oil, not the origin of the crude inside a product, so diesel from the Netherlands, Belgium or India refined from Gulf crude does not count here. The index measures direct exposure only.
- Trade within the EU. National totals include deliveries from other EU countries, and the EU-27 row simply adds up the national reports.
- Eight member states. Finland (2025 crude clearly incomplete) and Croatia (jet fuel missing for Q2 2026) are excluded; Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta were not retrieved.
Data: Eurostat nrg_ti_oilm, updated 10 September 2026 and read from the Eurostat API on 23 September 2026; the latest month is June 2026, July for Belgium, Austria and Czechia.
Suggested citation for single values: “GOS Hormuz Exposure Index (Global Oil Shock, own calculation from Eurostat nrg_ti_oilm, as of 23 Sep 2026): France, 2025: 20.1%.”
4. What changed once the strait was shut?
Supplies from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran almost disappeared, falling from 1.4% to 0.2% of EU countries' imports, while Saudi Arabia kept shipping (Eurostat, own calculation). France is the clearest case: it imported 2,730 thousand tonnes of Kuwaiti jet fuel in 2025 and none in the second quarter of 2026. The Gulf share of its jet fuel imports fell from 59.8% to 12.0%, and the United States became its largest supplier with 351 thousand tonnes (26.1%).
On the Saudi side, Poland imported 2,535.8 thousand tonnes of Saudi crude in Q2 2026, 45.3% of its crude imports. That fits the route via Yanbu, but Eurostat does not record the loading port, so the data cannot prove it. Italy even took a larger share of its diesel from the Gulf than before: 55.8% in 2025, 65.7% in Q2 2026, with Saudi Arabia alone at 60.7% of all Italian diesel imports.
Month by month, the Gulf share of EU countries' crude imports was 16.0% in March 2026, 7.8% in April, 6.0% in May and 7.4% in June (own calculation). US data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show a similar slide: 10.4% of crude imports came from the Persian Gulf in March, 8.0% in April, 3.1% in May and 1.9% in June, when 3,397 thousand barrels arrived, 2,893 thousand of them from Saudi Arabia (shares own calculation).
For the state of the strait itself: in March the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that flows through Hormuz had fallen to less than 10% of pre-crisis levels (Oil Market Report, 12 March 2026). By September it put crude export losses at “just below 45%”, helped by more oil bypassing the strait and US military escorts (Oil Market Report, 11 September 2026).
5. If Europe buys so little Gulf oil, why do prices still jump?
Because oil is priced on a world market: when Asian buyers, who took 80% of the oil exported through Hormuz in 2025, lose Gulf cargoes, they bid for the same replacement barrels as European and American refiners, even though Europe itself received only around 600 kb/d, “just 4%” of those exports, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Brent spot averaged $103 a barrel in March 2026, $32 more than in February (EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2026). Dated Brent averaged $91.00 in August and reached $113.48 on 9 September (IEA, 11 September 2026). Whether emergency stock releases dampened that rise is examined on Do releases lower prices?.
Asia's weight explains the pull. China and India alone took 44% of the Gulf's exports through the strait, according to the IEA. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA), counting crude and condensate only, found that 89% went to Asian markets in the first half of 2025, and Japan sourced 94.0% of its 2025 crude imports by volume from the Middle East, according to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). How Asian governments used their stocks is covered on Asia: China, Japan, Korea, India.
Why is the index for EU countries, 13.2%, so much higher than the IEA's 4%? The two numbers answer different questions. The 4% is Europe's share of what the Gulf ships through Hormuz; the 13.2% is the Gulf's share of what EU countries import. The index also counts oil from the seven states whatever port it left from, Yanbu, Fujairah or Ceyhan included, and it is measured in tonnes, not barrels. To see how long a country's emergency stocks would last under different outage assumptions, the Hormuz scenario calculator uses the values of this index as its starting points.
How to cite: Global Oil Shock (Jörg Dässler), “GOS Hormuz Exposure Index: Who Relies on Gulf Oil”, as of 23 Sep 2026, https://globaloilshock.com/en/strategic-oil-reserves/hormuz-exposure-index/