Bunker fuel sales fell by more than a quarter in Spanish ports in April as Covid-19 lockdowns weighed heavily on demand.
Spanish ports supplied a total of 525,000t of bunker fuels in April, a 26pc drop from 714,000t in April last year. April was the first month when the impact of Europe's Covid-19 measures were visible in aggregate bunker sales at European ports.
Cruise traffic took a particularly heavy hit, with 91pc fewer ships entering Spanish ports. Dry bulk and container ship traffic was also sharply down, with 13pc less dry bulk tonnes and 14pc less twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers handled by the ports. Demand from liquid bulk ships held up better and the ports actually handled 4pc more liquid bulk tonnes than a year earlier. Crude oil and products tanker demand rose in April, largely because of demand for floating storage and higher exports from the Middle East.
The biggest bunker volume declines were in Tenerife and Barcelona, with drops of 69pc and 52pc, respectively. Both are major cruise ship bunkering ports, but 52pc and 99pc fewer ships entered their ports in April.
Barcelona is also among Spain's biggest ports for liquid bulk, dry bulk and container ships. It handled 31pc fewer liquid bulk, 12pc fewer dry bulk and 23pc fewer TEUs in April.
Bunker demand held up better in Las Palmas, which supplied 185,000t and fell by only 4pc compared with last year. Las Palmas' bunker sales were supported by a 25pc increase in liquid bulk, and weakened by 32pc fewer solid bulk, 30pc fewer TEUs, and 87pc fewer cruise ships.
Las Palmas overtook Algeciras to become the biggest Spanish bunkering port in the first quarter, mainly because it was more competitively priced than Algeciras, according to suppliers. The most popular fuel — 0.5pc sulphur fuel oil — was at a weekly average $4-8/t discount in Las Palmas to Algeciras in the first half of April, and then swung to a $4-8/t premium.
Bunker sales were down by 19pc to 168,000t in Algeciras in April. Algeciras handles the most container ships of Spanish ports, and they fell by 7pc to 401,000 TEUs in April. It also handled 13pc less dry bulk tonnes, while liquid bulk was up by 3pc.
Ceuta supplied 38pc less bunker fuels, pulled down by a 25pc drop in liquid bulk handling, 65pc drop in TEUs, and no dry bulk and cruise traffic in April.
The port of Gibraltar, which is the Mediterranean's largest for bunkering, does not publish bunker sales numbers, but the number of ships bunkering there in April was down by 15pc on the year to 440 in April. No cruise ships called at Gibraltar in April, compared with 21 a year before.
