Losing track of the whereabouts of 1.5 million bpd of oil has rarely been more critical.
The oil market has struggled for months to establish a clear direction, keeping prices stuck in a narrow range, as traders have sought to make sense of starkly divergent supply and demand projections from the IEA, OPEC and other forecasting agencies.
The IEA has long forecast a severe oil glut this year and next due to rising global production. In its latest report released on Tuesday, the Paris-based agency provided an even more bearish outlook, forecasting a surplus of 2.35 million barrels per day in 2025 and 4 million bpd - or nearly 4% of global demand - next year.
OPEC, on the other hand, expects global oil supply to closely track demand through 2026.
Given that we're already in the fourth quarter of 2025, this difference is striking, with few precedents in the long history of the world's largest commodity market.
The murky crude picture got even muddier on Tuesday when the IEA report also noted that it was unable to account for 1.47 million bpd of oil in its global balances for August, the equivalent of 1.4% of annual demand.
By comparison, the IEA "unaccounted for balance" figure for July was 850,000 bpd, or 370,000 bpd for the second quarter overall.
This 1.47 million bpd figure is a staggeringly big blind spot with significant implications for the overall balance between global supply and demand. The IEA's figures show supply outstripping demand by 2.04 million bpd in August, meaning that the oversupply could, in theory, grow to 3.5 million bpd or shrink to 500,000 bpd. That's a huge difference that could have a meaningful effect on crude prices.
The IEA calculates global oil balances using official government data as well as figures from private companies and analysts on production, consumption, exports and storage.
It is quite common for forecasters to have "holes" in their calculations due to delays in government reporting and the periodic absence of some data sets given the sheer size of the global oil market.
Indeed, the IEA regularly updates historical data. In its monthly report in May, the agency made significant upward revisions to recent years' oil demand, including increasing 2024 oil consumption by 350,000 bpd, thereby flipping a previously reported surplus into a deficit.
But the sheer scale of the missing barrels in the IEA's August report should give traders and investors pause, particularly because this is coming at a time when the market is already trying to make sense of forecasters' wildly divergent projections.
