Gasoil stocks at ARA, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub that is Northwest Europe's primary independent storage and trading triangle, fell to a 2.5-year low near 13.66mb in mid-June even as import volumes rose1. The 12-year product-stock low logged in late May was the prior floor; this deeper read confirms the tightness is structural, not a seasonal wobble that builds back into summer.
The sourcing has shifted. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, now supplies 33-37% of ARA gasoil imports, routing through Suez and the Mediterranean rather than the shorter Baltic legs2. That change matters because it carries a cost the old Baltic barrels never did. The Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), the Iranian-backed body levying navigation-services tolls on Gulf-adjacent sea lanes, now sits in the freight bill on Saudi-to-NWE cargoes. A Cape reroute on a VLCC adds roughly $2-3/bbl; the toll absorbed on a Med Aframax adds roughly $0.50-0.70/bbl.
Either path is a new, unpriced floor under ARA supply cost. NWE diesel now carries a Gulf-freight beta it did not have when Baltic barrels dominated, which means the PGSA toll is no longer a Hormuz-politics story but a line item in the ARA crack. The ICE Gasoil crack floor near $54/bbl, which survived the May selloff in Brent, has these physical prints under it again, reinforced by the same forward-freight scramble the desk tracks on The Gulf VLCC curve.
