Methodology

How the country fuel cover monitor works

Reserves Monitor is designed around source-backed claims, not opaque AI scoring. A number only goes live when it is attached to a source card or clearly labeled as a model derived from sourced layers.

1. Source ranking

Official government, regulator, ministry, and stock-agency disclosures rank first. Major media reporting is only used when no direct official figure exists for the current window. Modelled layers are shown separately and never masquerade as direct reporting.

2. Extraction policy

We store source date separately from article published date. AI may help collect candidate claims, but deterministic validation rules must approve the final published figure and keep the previous version archived.

3. Confidence rubric

Confidence is deterministic. Scores are reduced for non-official sources, inferred calculations, mixed or on-water stock scope, stale source windows, and stale rechecks. The public badge is the result of that rubric, not an arbitrary model output.

4. Overall fuel cover

Overall fuel cover is a weighted composite of petrol, diesel, jet fuel, LPG, and LNG live claims. Crude is shown separately and is not silently blended into the public overall number.

5. Disruption-adjusted cover

This layer applies a country import-stress discount to overall cover. It is explicitly marked as modelled and exists to answer a different question from the direct source-backed fuel days: what would current cover look like under a supply shock?

6. Update policy

We only publish an update page when a real claim changes or a newer source supersedes the live figure. The old claim remains in the archive with its source history rather than being overwritten in place.