Strong domestic demand sees US oil product imports growing (below are extracts only – full analysis attached)
Recovering demand for US oil products has caused a 25.9% rise in US seaborne imports of oil products in the first seven months of 2021 compared to 2020, with imports so far this year totalling 26.1m tonnes. The highest increase has been recorded from the largest supplier of US seaborne oil product imports, Europe, from which with imports are up 49.8% compared with last year.
Despite the impressive growth rates, total volumes are still down by 19.1% from the first seven months of 2019, which in volume terms translates to a 6.2 million tonne drop. Compared to 2019, Europe is the region which has recovered most of its 2020 losses, down 8.5% in the first seven months of the year (-1m tonnes). The largest difference between 2021 and 2019 levels comes from oil product imports from Russia which are down 1.7m tonnes (-38.2%).
Europe and Asia account for more than two-thirds of total US seaborne oil product imports
US seaborne oil product imports predominantly come from Europe and Asia. The two regions account for just over 70% of total seaborne oil product imports in the first seven months of 2021. The US has imported 10.6m tonnes and 7.7m tonnes respectively from the two so far this year. […]
Growth in volumes hasn’t led to higher freight rates
Higher volumes have not resulted in a significant increase in freight rates which, despite the 49.8% growth in volumes between Europe and the US, are still below last year’s levels. In fact, earnings on the Rotterdam to New York trade for a clean MR1 tanker (37,000 tonnes) fell to […]
US demand for oil products recovering faster than crude oil production
Providing support to the recovery in US oil product imports is the recovery in US demand for oil products, in particular as domestic production has been slower to recover than demand. In the first three weeks of September, average products supplied in the US was 20.3m […]
“After many months with average crude oil production of 11m bpd, US producers had begun to scale up until the recent hurricane-related disruption sent production back down. Barring the recent fall, the uptick in US crude oil production had seen a slow start compared with the recovery in domestic demand. This caused a drawdown of stocks built up at the height of the oil price war, and higher oil product imports, bringing extra volumes to tanker shipping, but doing little to help freight rates,” says Peter Sand, BIMCO’s Chief Shipping Analyst.
As always any question and comment are welcome.
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Special guest, Head Trade Analyst at VesselsValue.
Take care
Peter
Peter Sand
Chief Shipping Analyst
