Energy executives and analysts are bracing for a severe, prolonged spike in prices for gasoline, jet fuel, and other refined fuels.
The depletion of fuel inventories is “rapidly accelerating” and could reach “critically low levels” ahead of summer, Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, said on Monday. Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopened immediately and crude oil prices stabilize, it will take “months” for refineries to catch up, S&P Global Energy analysts wrote in a note, with demand destruction — i.e. prices high enough to force consumers to stop buying — as the only way for the market to reach balance in the meantime.
Already, global demand for fuels in the second quarter will likely decline twice as much as it did during the 2008 recession and stay lower well into the third quarter, they said.
Jet fuel is particularly vulnerable, JPMorgan’s head of global commodities strategy Natasha Kaneva said in a note to clients, and currently commands an “extraordinary” premium of up to $100 above the price of crude. That signal will encourage refineries to churn out more jet fuel, she wrote — but in exchange, result in less diesel and gasoline, meaning that global road transportation costs will rise and an average of $5 per gallon gasoline in the US “can no longer be dismissed.”
