Europe's airlines face a Gulf jet-fuel squeeze as oil holds above $90

Europe's airlines face a Gulf jet-fuel squeeze as oil holds above $90 Roughly 75% of Europe's jet fuel moves through the Gulf, leaving carriers exposed as Brent trades near $94 and global oil stocks draw fast. Around 75% of Europe's jet fuel imports come from the Middle East Gulf, the Oil & Gas Journal reported on Monday (2026-06-08), turning the near-shut Strait of Hormuz into an immediate supply shock for the region's airlines.⁶ Fuel is one of an airline's largest variable costs, and the cheapest barrels now sit behind a closed shipping lane. The US-Israeli war on Iran has effectively shut the Strait, through which around a fifth of the world's daily oil and LNG passes, Reuters reported on 2026-05-18.^5,6 ICE Brent crude front-month traded at $94.11 on Monday (2026-06-08), well above the sub-$90 level it touched on 2026-05-19, when President Trump suggested the conflict could wind down soon.⁴ The de-escalation bounce has faded; the supply drain has not.⁶ Observable global oil stocks have fallen a cumulative 246 million barrels since the conflict began, a 129 million-barrel draw in March followed by 117 million in April, equivalent to about 3.9 million b/d, OGJ said.⁶ Strip out barrels stranded in Gulf storage or stuck aboard tankers that cannot transit Hormuz, and the effective decline is steeper still.⁶ The US is drawing hard too. Total stocks of crude and products including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell about 24.1 million barrels in the week of 2026-05-11, one of the five largest weekly declines on record, EIA data cited by Wood Mackenzie showed.¹ US crude and product exports hit a record 14.2 million b/d that week, 33% above the same week in 2025.¹ Refiners are the squeeze point. Global refinery crude runs in 2026 are now expected to average around 82 million b/d, nearly 1.6 million b/d below 2025 levels, OGJ said.⁶ Less crude run means less jet fuel, on top of the cargoes the Gulf cannot ship.⁶ The hit to airline economics is concrete. Before the war, IATA had forecast the Middle East would contribute 17% of the $41bn in net profit it expected the global airline industry to earn in 2026, the Economist reported.² Some 20% of the world's jet fuel passes through the Strait of Hormuz, James Noel-Beswick of Sparta Commodities noted.² The disruption is redrawing the route map. Western carriers see a chance to win back customers from Gulf hubs that lean on the same chokepoint, and demand is shifting east. Germany's Lufthansa reported a 60% jump in bookings for flights to Asia in March.² For many businesses, a fuel-price jump lands as a one-two punch: input and operating costs rise first, then customers start penny-pinching, the Economist noted.³ A Gallup poll in the week of 2026-05-18 found 55% of Americans said their personal financial situation was getting worse, a record high in that survey's 25-year history.¹ That has already stalled commercial decisions. The 10-day conflict in Iran is rippling through aviation and has put some aircraft deals on hold, OilPrice reported on 2026-05-19.⁴ Carriers do not order jets into a fuel-cost shock they cannot price.⁴ The bigger risk is demand itself. Goldman Sachs warned oil could soon reach demand-destruction levels if the Hormuz disruption continues, and it expects outages to Qatari LNG exports to persist longer than previously assumed, lifting its second-quarter 2026 forecast for Europe's TTF gas benchmark to about $22 per MMBtu.⁴ So far the equity market has read the shock as a redistribution rather than a wipeout. Listed companies in one tracked basket have seen share prices rally by an average of over 8% since 27 February, the Economist reported, a reminder that some firms gain from dearer fuel even as airlines bleed.³ The next signal is whether the de-escalation talk that knocked Brent below $90 on 2026-05-19 firms into an actual reopening of Hormuz, or whether refinery runs keep sliding while stocks drain near 3.9 million b/d.^4,6 With Brent back above $94 and Gulf jet fuel still bottled up, the carriers most exposed to Asian routes have the least room to wait.⁶