Spain’s Order TED/1100/2026, effective on 22 October, temporarily lowers the minimum security stocks that obligated companies must hold for automotive and other gas oils, aviation kerosene and other kerosenes. Adding six days to an earlier four-day reduction brings the requirement for those products from the ordinary 92 days to 82. The order estimates the additional release at about 4.4 million barrels.

The measure forms part of the International Energy Agency’s coordinated action launched on 11 March after supply disruption linked to the Middle East. Spain announced a contribution of up to 11.553 million barrels in March. The new order does not release all of the remaining contribution at once; later quantities and timing will depend on domestic supply, stock levels and international market conditions.

The reduction applies only to stocks held by obligated companies. It does not reduce the strategic reserves owned by CORES, Spain’s petroleum-reserves corporation, or CORES’ own stockholding obligation. Companies must introduce the released products into the market by 15 December 2026. CORES will monitor implementation and report periodically to the ministry.

Gasoline and fuel oils are outside the new measure: their requirements remain at 88 days after the four-day reduction made in March. The government cited IEA assessments of constrained middle-distillate supply, falling inventories and elevated logistics costs. The order makes some mandatory stocks temporarily available to the market; it does not guarantee lower pump prices or a specified increase in supply.

The order describes a temporary deviation from Spain’s ordinary stockholding framework, rather than a transfer of all national emergency reserves to the market. Spanish rules normally require obligated entities to hold minimum stocks equivalent to 92 days of sales or consumption. The European Union framework sets a minimum equivalent to 90 days of net imports or 61 days of consumption, whichever is higher, while allowing a temporary lower level when an effective international reserve mobilisation decision applies. In this case, the order is made under Spain’s March response to the IEA coordinated action. That legal context helps explain why the day-count reductions are product-specific and temporary.

The March decision authorized up to 11.553 million barrels as Spain’s contribution to the IEA action, which the order says was intended to make 400 million barrels available across participating countries. It first reduced obligations by four days across gasoline, gas oils, kerosenes and fuel oils. October’s order draws on a further authorization of up to 8.3 days but selects six additional days only for gas oils and kerosenes. The remaining contribution is to be introduced according to continuing assessments of domestic supply, stock levels and international market conditions. This sequencing means the 4.4-million-barrel figure is the order’s estimate for this tranche, not the whole Spanish commitment or a daily flow rate. The legal text also provides for CORES to monitor market introduction and for the ordinary obligation to be restored when authorities decide. No restoration date is set in this instrument.

The day count is a regulatory holding obligation based on the sales or consumption reference in Spanish law, not a direct report of how many days of fuel were physically present in every company’s tanks on October 22. The order authorizes obligated companies to introduce the relevant stocks into the market by the deadline while retaining separate reporting and oversight. It does not publish company-by-company starting inventories, product delivery schedules or downstream price data. Readers should therefore treat the 82- and 88-day figures as the temporary legal minimums set for the named product groups, not as observed national inventory days after all deliveries.