US fuel oil imports were averaged lower in August than at any time since 1945, according to recent data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), reports engine online.
Decline of oil imports
EIA data shows US fuel oil imports recorded a significant 42% decline from July to August, but the slump was not a one-off occurrence. Instead, the EIA says, it is the culmination of decades of economic and environmental moves away from fuel oil.
“The reason fuel imports have declined is largely that there is less demand for residual fuel oil as a finished product in the United States,” the EIA’s Morgan Butterfield told ENGINE.
Historically, residual fuel oil has mainly been used in the US for power generation and bunkering. Starting in the 1970s, demand from the power generation sector started to wane as natural gas and coal became cheaper alternatives to fuel oil, Butterfield says.
More recently, bunkering demand for fuel oil has also started to shrink as the shipping industry is trying to decarbonise. That has encouraged more use of lower-sulphur alternatives like marine diesel oil (MDO) and marine gasoil (MGO), he said.
The biggest source
Mexico remained the biggest source of the US fuel oil imports in August, according to data from cargo tracker Vortexa. The EIA’s Butterfield says it is unlikely that less access to Mexico fuel oil imports were behind the overall slump in imports.
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Source : engine. Online
