In Donald Trump’s war with Iran, his most serious enemies aren’t Mojtaba Khamenei or even the Revolutionary Guards. Instead, they are Brent and West Texas Intermediate. In this light, the best way to interpret the US President’s statements yesterday about the war effectively being over is as an attempt to calm the oil markets. This might work for a few hours, or even days if Trump is lucky. But if the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, then the problem will not go away. How, then, is the world responding?

In recent days, Western countries have gathered to discuss releasing oil reserves to calm the markets. But this is unlikely to have much effect. Members of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which includes all G7 countries, are obligated to hold at least 90 days’ worth of their oil imports in reserve. Collectively, the IEA holds about 1.2 billion barrels in reserve. This is intended for genuine emergencies such as war or natural disasters, not for oil going above $100 a barrel. Despite these discussions, the French finance minister has stated that the G7 is not at the point where it will release the reserves.

His position isn’t entirely surprising, as there are several problems with this approach to calming the markets. The first is the sheer magnitude of the issue at hand. About 20% of the world’s seaborne crude oil, or around 20 million barrels per day, normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. If that continues to remain at a standstill, this could be the most significant supply disruption in history. This oil could be sent elsewhere via pipelines, but this would cause a disruption in the region of about 10 million barrels per day, perhaps higher.

Even at 1.2 billion barrels of oil in total reserves, the amount of time for which one can cover that is finite – around four months. But the more fundamental problem is that one cannot release it all at the drop of a hat because of problem number two: whatever is lost must be replaced. This is the situation in which Western countries would soon find themselves.

That would then put more pressure on the market. Combine this with the fact that a prolonged Hormuz blockage would mean production stoppages in the Gulf of Persia, and a start-up period. To a certain extent, this is already happening. Some estimates suggest that production curbs in the Gulf had already come to between 6.2 million and 6.9 million barrels per day worth of output. Withdrawing reserves en masse from storage would mean having to refill while Gulf countries are trying to bring their oil levels back to normal.

Reserves are also structured differently from country to country, between government-held reserves and industrial ones. Most of France’s are government-controlled, but none of the UK’s are. Counting reserves also differs. Some of this oil is in pipelines, which effectively shouldn’t count if it is necessary to stay in those lines to maintain operational consistency.

Unfortunately for Trump, and for the rest of us, there is no easy fix for his Hormuz problem. The US President could walk away but, despite his comments, this isn’t likely. The oil markets are likely to face disruption for as long as this war persists. Even as Western countries try to use all the weapons at their disposal to calm the markets, the problem seems bigger than they can handle. The oil crisis isn’t going away any time soon.

This is an edited version of an article which first appeared in the Eurointelligence newsletter.