Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine show that crude availability alone does not guarantee finished fuels. Concentrated refinery capacity and limited transport and storage links can turn processing nodes into systemic bottlenecks.
Refining and product logistics—not crude production—are the immediate constraint on diesel, jet fuel, marine fuels and petrochemical feedstocks.
Global refining capacity is concentrated: roughly 575 active refineries across 107 countries with 2025 capacity around 103.66 million barrels per day but lower throughput.
Geopolitical disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated how export route constraints, tank filling, and attacks can disable millions of barrels per day of refinery output without direct damage to plants.
The conflict involving Iran and the continuing Russia-Ukraine war are exposing a supply-chain vulnerability that receives far less attention than crude oil production: the global refining and petroleum logistics network. The problem facing the global economy is no longer simply the availability of oil. That network is more concentrated than many supply-chain executives may realize.
When flows through Hormuz collapsed earlier this year, more than 3 million barrels per day of regional refining capacity shut down because of attacks or because facilities lacked viable outlets for their products. Agency estimated that more than 4 million barrels per day of refining capacity was potentially at risk as product tanks filled and export routes became constrained. That creates a supply-chain architecture increasingly dependent on large industrial nodes and long transportation lanes.
The world can have crude oil available and still experience shortages of diesel, jet fuel, marine fuels and petrochemical feedstocks if it cannot move that crude to the right refineries, process it into the products customers actually consume and then move those products to the markets where they are needed. In 2026, that distinction has become increasingly important. It is the network capacity required to transform and deliver it.
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Oil traders are concerned that the higher costs make it unprofitable for some refiners to turn crude into fuels, deterring them from buying cargoes that have to sail over long distances.
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