Hellenic Shipping News: Product Tankers Trades are Shifting in Flows as a Result of Changes in Demand

25 April 2016: “Since the global financial crisis, when product trades declined as a result of a sudden pull-back in oil demand, the oil trades (both crude and products) have made a comeback. However, the individual products that are driving the expansion of oil demand are not all growing at the same rate. Also, product demand is growing at different rates in different regions of the world. In this week’s Poten’s Tanker Opinion we want to highlight some of the recent trends in product demand and their possible implication for product flows and tanker demand. “In its latest weekly report, shipbrokers and market analysts Poten & Partners noted that the largest product groups currently in the market are gasoil/diesel, as well as gasoline. Meanwhile, in a smaller group are included products like LPG, naphtha and jet fuel/kerosene, which are also growing in market share, but at a slower pace than the former. On the other hand, residual fuel oil is the only product which has been declining in terms of demand since the early 2000’s. According to Poten, the above demand trends will remain as such for the foreseeable future, as a result of steadily improving living conditions in Asia countries, which is feeding gasoline demand at a global scale, despite the fact that modern vehicles are better at fuel efficiency.”