Europe risks jet fuel shortages

Europe warns jet fuel stocks could run out within weeks as Hormuz disruption drags on, IEA chief Fatih Birol says flights may be cancelled without restored flows, governments discover that aviation security depends on commercial inventories

Europe has “maybe six weeks or so” of jet fuel left if oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz remain disrupted, the head of the International Energy Agency said in an Associated Press interview, a warning that puts airline schedules on the same risk register as energy policy.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, told AP that flight cancellations could come “soon” if the bottleneck persists, describing the situation as the largest energy crisis he has seen. More than 110 oil tankers and over 15 liquefied natural gas carriers are waiting in the Persian Gulf, he said, but the queue itself is not a substitute for open passage.

A jet-fuel pinch hits differently from a crude price spike. Airlines buy refined product, not barrels of crude, and airports and fuel distributors carry limited inventories because storage is expensive and capital tied up in stock earns nothing. That makes “six weeks” less a countdown to empty tanks than a measure of how quickly normal scheduling turns into rationing once deliveries become uncertain.

Birol also warned against Iran’s reported “toll booth” approach—allowing passage for a fee—arguing it risks normalising a precedent that could spread to other chokepoints such as the Malacca Strait. That is a political claim dressed as a technical one: once a waterway becomes a revenue stream, every future crisis invites a price tag, and insurers and shippers start treating access as negotiable rather than assumed.

The economic transmission mechanism is familiar. Higher transport costs lift headline inflation, then feed into wage demands and interest-rate expectations; governments respond with subsidies, tax cuts, or emergency releases that shift costs from users to taxpayers. Birol said more than 80 key energy assets in the region had been damaged and that restoring pre-war production could take months and, in his view, potentially up to two years—meaning a short, sharp shock could become a longer period of constrained supply even after fighting subsides.

For Europe, aviation is a visible stress test because cancellations are immediate and politically noisy. Freight, agriculture, and industry can sometimes substitute fuels or routes; a cancelled flight is simply a cancelled service. If the constraint tightens, the first decisions are likely to be commercial: which routes are profitable enough to keep, and which airports can secure deliveries under tighter credit and insurance terms.

Birol’s warning was delivered from Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in view. The practical question for European capitals is whether a continent that regulates airline emissions down to the gram has also built a fuel system resilient enough to keep planes in the air when a single strait becomes contested.