The amount of gasoline being stored in product tankers sitting off the West African ports of Lagos, Nigeria, and Lome, Togo, has increased sharply in recent weeks. Levels were around 1 million (mn) metric tons (MT) of gasoline last week since reaching 1.07mn MT on July 7, and dropping back to 950 kilo metric tons (KMT) on July 14, according to Genscape monitoring. This has run up from 600 KMT at the end of June, and is the highest seen since March 14 when levels reached 997 KMT.
Of that total, some 568 KMT are sitting off the Togolese port of Lome, up from 297 KMT at the end of June, while a further 356 KMT is currently being held off Lagos. Lome has seen the sharpest build of the two ports, having run up from levels closer to 100K MT in May, while Lagos remains below the peak of its inventory at 694 KMT in March.
In addition to gasoline, a further 514 KMT of gasoil is also believed to be currently sitting off the shore of West Africa in tankers, according to Genscape vessel monitoring.
Genscape also monitors vessels’ draft changes as they sit offshore of West Africa, in order to gauge the amount of petroleum products being held after a ship has arrived and to measure cargoes as they are gradually lightered, i.e. moved onshore using smaller vessels.
West Africa and the Americas constitute two of the largest destination regions for European gasoline exports. In recent weeks, European gasoline loadings bound for West Africa have risen from the 296 KMT in the week ending June 2 to 518 KMT loaded during the week ending June 30.
European mogas exports to the Americas have decreased in recent weeks, dropping from 690 KMT loaded in the week ending June 16, to the 352 KMT loaded in the week ending June 30. They only rebounded slightly to 560 KMT in the week ending July 14.
June’s European mogas exports to West Africa totaled just over 2.14mn MT, up from the 1.36mn MT loaded during February. Europe-Americans mogas volumes fell from 2.51mn MT in May to 2.14mn MT in June. Thus far in July, Genscape has only seen 1.54mn MT loaded or fixed to go out of European ports.
Using its proprietary AIS information from Genscape Vesseltracker and market intelligence, Genscape tracks European product tanker activity in its weekly European Waterborne Products and ARA Gasoil/ULSD Cargoes reports, as well as publishing daily destination changes for cargoes on the water. Genscape's European Waterborne Products Report illuminates the flows in and out of Europe and the Baltic so that traders and analysts can better gauge global refined product markets. To learn more, or to request a trial of Genscape's European Waterborne Products Report, please click here.