As the Iran war enters its eighth month, several oil industry executives are warning that the temporary measures the world can take to soften the conflict's impact are gradually running out.

Since February, the war has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Under normal conditions, this critical waterway carries roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.

Even so, the rise in benchmark crude futures has been fairly limited, with Brent crude still below $100 a barrel on Tuesday. Part of the reason is that producers and consumers have already used nearly every available tool to cope with falling shipment volumes. These include broadly suppressing demand, boosting supply from other parts of the world, and releasing strategic oil reserves on a large scale. In recent weeks, the number of tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz has also risen sharply.

Several executives attending the Energy Intelligence Forum in London warned about whether these workarounds can remain effective over the long term. "There is a limit to how much shock these buffers can continue to absorb," said Shell CEO Wael Sawan. "We may have softened the worst of this crisis, but this situation cannot last indefinitely, or further disruptions will emerge."

Still, while the market's cushion has shrunk, similar warnings have appeared before. Early in the conflict, market observers warned that the scale of the disruption meant supply could run out within just a few weeks. Thanks to these workarounds, a broad supply cutoff ultimately did not materialize, though demand and supply in some poorer countries around the world were indeed hit.

Now, executives at the forum say crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are approaching pre-war levels, but as long as shipping remains disrupted, it means solutions must still be found elsewhere. "To keep the market balanced through the winter, we need to move about 10 million, 12 million, or even 14 million barrels of oil through this route," said Vitol CEO Russell Hardy. "Because the West has no more inventories left to draw down."

Most of the pressure in the oil market is concentrated in two specific areas: refined products and shipping. Last week, some countries announced new plans to release 100 million barrels of oil onto the global market to ease price pressure. That follows the release of 400 million barrels announced earlier this year. Even so, this means global inventories will continue to decline in the coming months, especially stockpiles of refined products such as diesel. In recent weeks, supplies of these refined products have been unusually tight.

"While the crude supply crunch is already severe, refined product prices have risen even more sharply," said Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser. "Emergency reserves may help us get through one winter, but they cannot solve the long-term supply problem."