IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told CNBC that "the loss of oil in April will be twice the loss of oil in March." His reasoning was simple: in March, some tankers were already in transit before the war broke out. In April, nothing is coming through Hormuz. The IEA has called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, with 12 million barrels per day knocked offline. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen followed that with a Financial Times interview saying "this is going to be a protracted crisis" and that Brussels is assessing "all possibilities" including fuel rationing.
He also confirmed the EU will not reverse its Russian LNG ban, even under pressure. Goldman Sachs modeled a scenario requiring 254 million barrels released from global strategic reserves just to cut the inventory hit in half. That's not a plan. That's damage control.