Rotterdam

Rotterdam's own berths tell the story behind the ARA-wide gasoil low: hub-wide stocks fell to a 2.5-year trough of about 13.48 million barrels by 15 July, trade publication Engine reported, while the port's own gasoil intake slid to some 84,000 barrels a day, barely half what its berths handled in June's 188,000-a-day pace. Europe has replaced lost Russian supply with gasoil shipped the long way from Saudi Arabia via Suez, and when even that route slows, Rotterdam has no quick local backup to refill its own tanks.

The squeeze is not new: BP ran both crude units at its 400,000 b/d Rotterdam refinery offline simultaneously through May, pushing ARA stocks to their lowest since July 2025 even as US distillate inventories tightened on the other side of the Atlantic.

European diesel refining margins held firm near $46 a barrel into early July even as crude oil prices fell, with EU rules keeping discounted Russian and Iranian diesel out of the market and letting refiners keep a wide margin regardless of which way crude moves. For Rotterdam itself, that wide margin is only partly capturable: one of BP's two 200,000 b/d crude units restarted on 4 June after an unplanned outage, but the second has stayed dark since planned maintenance began on 1 May with no confirmed return date.

As Northwest Europe's second-largest refining site, Rotterdam sits at half its normal 400,000 b/d capacity through a period when its own hub's diesel crack has been setting records, capping how much of that margin the port's own refinery can bank.