Crude oil and refined products markets have held up surprisingly well in the three months since Iran — and a retaliatory US blockade — effectively deprived the world of 16 million barrels per day of supplies. Indeed, despite the unprecedented global supply shock, a relative calm persists. Shockingly, buyers from traditionally Mideast-dependent countries are understood to be able to find replacement crudes with little fuss so far. Several buffers explain why: a massive slowdown in China's oil purchases, robust inventories and oil-on-water volumes precrisis, emergency stock releases, surging US exports, and, increasingly, creeping demand displacement. But with even the most hopeful headlines this week pointing to a Hormuz reopening still at least another month away, the question begs: How long can that relative calm continue? The world has lost an average 10.6 million b/d of crude oil and almost 5.4 million b/d of products (including LPG and ethane) since US-Israeli attacks launched the latest Mideast crisis on Feb. 28, Energy Intelligence calculations show, based on data from tanker tracker Kpler. The rate of losses is even worse in May, at closer to 17.4 million b/d relative to the December 2025-February 2026 average, due to the effectiveness of a mid-April-instituted US blockade on Iranian shipments. An expected prewar supply surplus of 3.1 million b/d in the first quarter of 2026 and 2.5 million b/d in the second, crucially, has helped limit the actual deficit felt by the market. But the underlying magnitude of the disruption remains unprecedented: Even taking previously expected surpluses into account, for every month the strait is shut, the world experiences a shortfall of more than 400 million barrels on average, or some 100 million bbl per week. At that rate, even if the strait reopens early in the third quarter as recent reports suggest, the world is facing a supply deficit of 2.6 million b/d this year, Energy Intelligence estimates.