The Countries With No Oil Reserves

Ninety percent. That's the share of Pakistan's oil and liquefied natural gas imports that flow through the Strait of Hormuz. The country's strategic petroleum reserve? Zero barrels.

Despite depending on supplies through the Strait of Hormuz for up to 90% of its oil and liquefied natural gas imports, Pakistan has no strategic petroleum reserves, leaving it exposed to supply shocks provoked by the Iran war even as its lending programme with the International Monetary Fund limits room for costly state-owned emergency stocks , according to a government document reviewed by Reuters. The Hormuz crisis has turned that vulnerability from theoretical to existential. A tanker loaded with crude oil from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve has set off from the Gulf of Mexico to the Philippines in what is the first U.S. oil shipment to Asia since late 2022, highlighting the rearrangement of energy flows resulting from the shutdown of normal tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz , OilPrice.com reported. Prior to the war, Asia got as much as 80% of its crude oil from the Middle East .

Pakistan is not alone in its exposure, but it may be the most naked. The Philippines has no strategic reserve either. Neither does Bangladesh. Yet Japan holds 263 million barrels in government-held inventories as of December 2025, with industry required to hold 70 days of demand—approximately 220 million barrels—in addition to the 90-day strategic reserve overseen by the government , the EIA noted. South Korea holds substantial strategic oil inventories, averaging 79 million barrels during the same period in 2025 . Even India, despite its own fiscal constraints, had 21.4 million barrels of crude oil stored in its SPR as of March 2025 .

Can You Build a Reserve When You're Broke?

According to the document reviewed by Reuters, the energy ministry is proposing to build strategic petroleum reserves as well as commercial storage through bonded terminals, refineries and oil marketing companies, while also pushing for more oil and gas exploration and production, upgrades to its refineries and a consolidation of its downstream sector . The plan is ambitious. The funding mechanism is creative, if optimistic. The build-up of the government's own strategic reserves would be paid for by a ring-fenced fund financed by 10 rupees ($0.0359) per litre from the existing levy on petroleum, with allocations to start on July 1, generating about $700 million a year , the document states.

That sounds like a lot until you consider the scale of the problem. Pakistan requires $550 million worth of crude oil on a monthly basis, while storage costs of about $300 million will be required to maintain the strategic reserve , Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik told an energy conference in Islamabad last week, according to Arab News. Malik said building reserves was "easier said than done", especially for a country in an IMF programme with severe fiscal challenges, but added the government was trying to move quickly from planning to implementation .

The ministry has shared its framework with Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Corp, Kuwait Petroleum Corp, QatarEnergy, PetroChina, and oil trading firms Vitol and Trafigura, Reuters reported. The government plans to require that refineries hold 15 days of crude stocks and oil marketing companies to maintain 30 days of finished products, with the rules to be phased in through refinery policy, margin revisions and downstream consolidation by June 2028 .

What Happens When 80% of Asia's Oil Disappears?

The Hormuz closure has rewritten the map of global oil trade in real time. Cumulative supply losses from Gulf producers already exceed 1 billion barrels with more than 14 mb/d of oil now shut in, an unprecedented supply shock , the IEA reported in its May Oil Market Report. That's enough oil to run Japan for six months.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have successfully redirected some exports to terminals loading outside of the Strait, while stocks from commercial and government strategic storage sites in consuming countries are flowing into markets to offset part of the losses, with observed global inventories, including oil on water, drawn down by 250 mb over March and April, or 4 mb/d , the IEA noted. Producers outside of the Middle East pushed output higher and lifted exports to record levels in response to the crisis, with 2026 supply growth expectations from the Americas revised up by more than 600 kb/d since the start of the year, to 1.5 mb/d on average, and Atlantic Basin crude oil exports increasing by 3.5 mb/d since February .

The U.S. shipment to the Philippines is part of that reconfiguration. A 616,000-barrel shipment of emergency crude is headed to the Philippines aboard a Shell-chartered supertanker, the first time US Strategic Petroleum Reserve crude has shipped to Asia since November 2022, part of a massive 172 million barrel SPR release starting in March 2026 , according to shipping data. The Southeast Asian nation had not imported oil from the United States since 2020 , Kpler data showed.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has been forced into a similar scramble. The Philippine Department of Energy announced on April 20, 2026, that the Philippine National Oil Company has secured a cargo of 21,000 metric tons of liquefied petroleum gas from the United States, to be routed via Singapore and discharged at the Port of Batangas between May 20 and 31, 2026 , according to Gridwatch. The DoE tasked the oil and gas exploration arm of PNOC to procure around two million barrels of fuel to boost reserves, giving it a budget of P20 billion , BusinessWorld reported.

Why Did No One Build This Before?

The short answer: it was expensive, and the risk seemed theoretical. Risks around the Strait of Hormuz "were well understood" for years, but the war has shown how deep those vulnerabilities are, with Hormuz being the world's most documented energy chokepoint for decades, its risks mapped, modeled, and priced into infrastructure decisions across the region, yet until the February 2026 closure, the costs did not reach the threshold that would justify the scale of investment alternative infrastructure requires , Maisoon Kafafy, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council's Middle East programs, told CNBC.

The International Energy Agency has long required member countries to hold 90 days of net oil imports in strategic reserves. According to a March 2001 agreement, all of the then-30 members of the International Energy Agency must have a strategic petroleum reserve equal to 90 days of the previous year's net oil imports for their respective countries, with only net-exporter members of the IEA exempt from this requirement . Pakistan is not an IEA member. Neither is the Philippines. Neither are most of the countries now scrambling to source oil from Texas instead of the Gulf.

As of March 20, the Philippine petroleum supply was equivalent to about 45 days, higher than what is required but well below the recommended minimum by the International Energy Agency of 90 days , Jun Hao Ng, assistant economist for Asia Macro at Oxford Economics, told BusinessWorld. With no price controls, no strategic petroleum reserve, and near-total dependence on imported petroleum, every global price shock lands directly on Filipino consumers with no buffer, with the Philippines currently having no strategic petroleum reserve, which is the single most glaring structural gap exposed by this crisis , Noel M. Baga, co-convenor of the Center for Energy Research and Policy, said.

The bonded storage model Pakistan is proposing—allowing international suppliers and traders to hold petroleum stocks on Pakistani soil—is not new. There has been a progressive movement towards forward commercial storage agreements, which allow petroleum to be stored within an oil-importing country, with the reserves technically under the control of the oil-exporting country, enabling oil-importing countries to access these commercial reserves in a timely and cost effective way , according to research on global strategic petroleum reserves. It's a workaround for countries that can't afford to buy and hold their own oil.

What Changed This Week

In addition to its lack of strategic reserves, the document cited constrained port infrastructure, limited ship-to-ship capacity and insufficient storage among Pakistan's vulnerabilities . Brent crude traded at $75.20 per barrel on Tuesday, up 0.5%, according to market data, while WTI rose 0.6% to $71.50. Natural gas fell 2.4% to $3.25/MMBtu. The modest pullback in oil prices reflects cautious optimism about potential progress in U.S.-Iran talks, Reuters reported, though the Strait remains effectively closed to normal tanker traffic. Pakistan's energy ministry circulated its reserve-building framework to major oil producers and traders this week, signaling urgency. The Philippines received its first U.S. LPG cargo in late May. What was unthinkable in January—Asian countries sourcing emergency oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve—is now routine.

What to Watch

Pakistan's July 1 start date for the petroleum levy allocation to fund strategic reserves. Whether Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, or other Gulf producers agree to participate in Pakistan's bonded storage scheme—and on what terms. The Philippines' legislative debate on establishing a formal strategic petroleum reserve, which has taken on new urgency. Any further attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline or UAE's Fujairah terminal, which would eliminate the few bypass routes around Hormuz. And the IEA's June oil market report, expected around June 13, which will clarify whether the agency still expects Strait flows to resume by late May or early June—or whether Asia's oil crisis is entering a new, more protracted phase.