NEW DELHI:Amidst the looming global energy crisis, an opportunity has emerged for Indian refiners. The country’s diesel exports to Europe have increased post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, averaging at 730,000 million tonne per month post-invasion, versus the pre-invasion average of 570,000 mt/month, according to a report by Refinitiv’s Commodity Research.
Europe is the largest importer of diesel worldwide and is net short of the distillate that it uses for heating, road transport, power generation and industrial use. Seaborne imports into the region surged to an all-time high of 7.5 million tons in October, surpassing the previous record of 6.6 million mt in November 2021 by a whopping 13.6 percent, Refinitiv assessments show.
Now that winter is approaching, demand for diesel will peak in Europe, exacerbated by a full import ban on seaborne Russian oil imports and spiralling gas prices made worse by outages to the Nord Stream gas pipeline that has spurred gasto-oil switching for power-generation, which could blowout in the event of a harsher and prolonged winter.
