Updates throughout
Barge traffic along the River Rhine has largely come to a standstill, disrupting oil product supply in western Germany, barge operators said. Several terminals on the Lower Rhine will be cut off from barge traffic towards the end of the week.
The gauge at the key Kaub bottleneck reached a new record low over the weekend, at 17cm. The federal waterways and shipping administration expects it to fall to as little as 4cm by 14 August, making Kaub practically impassable.
Historically low levels have already slashed the number of barges able to pass Kaub, and the loads they can carry without running aground. A German shipowner said last week when levels had reached 23cm that a vessel with a maximum capacity of 1,200t can only carry 180t, and that the voyage to Karlsruhe from the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) hub now takes five days instead of two. Specialised vessels, which are wider and longer but draw less water, can carry a maximum of 700t.
The federal waterways and shipping administration also said the water level in Cologne stood at just under 60cm today. Most inland vessel fleets require water levels of around 1m to reach the loading terminals at Cologne Molenkopf, Cologne-Niehl, Godorf and Wesseling, shipping companies said.
This threshold was breached at the end of July, and water levels are forecast to fall further to as low as 40cm by mid-month. Loading terminals in western Germany, including Neuss, Duisburg and nearby Bendorf, may also become inaccessible during the week ending 14 August, shipowners said.
German policymakers have introduced emergency measures to ease growing logistical constraints along the river. The federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lower Saxony and Saarland have temporarily lifted restrictions on truck traffic on Sundays and public holidays.
But it remains unclear whether the oil product sector will benefit from these steps. Replacing a fully loaded barge carrying 2,400t of diesel would require almost 89 road tankers, each with a capacity of 32m³.
Fuel traders also report that their tanker fleets are already running above normal utilisation levels because of longer hauls to more competitively priced loading terminals.
Product availability in western Germany, especially for road fuels, has tightened in recent weeks, traders said.
Many traders that usually buy at tank farms along the Rhine are diverting to the Miro consortium's 310,000 b/d Karlsruhe refinery in southwestern Germany.
But supply in southern Germany has also fallen after a leak at a mild hydrocracker at the Bayernoil consortium's 207,000 b/d Vohburg-Neustadt refinery prompted two local suppliers to pull supply from the spot market on 7 August. The restrictions are likely to last a week.
