Germany risks running out of diesel, but Russia has little to do with it …
In the southern regions of Germany, there is an ongoing race for fuels, such as diesel and fuel oil, as told to Bloomberg by the refining company OMV. The cause of this shortage of refined products? The low level of the River Rhine.
The River Rhine, which flows northwest from Switzerland through Germany, France and the Netherlands to the North Sea, is an important transport corridor for petroleum products in Europe. Due to the heat waves and droughts that hit Europe this summer, the river levels are low and have now become too low for the passage of many barges carrying petroleum products.
OMV of Austria has a branch in Germany with a major refinery in southern Germany. It is currently witnessing a veritable hoarding rush. In this case, the transport crisis is also joined by the desire to speculate on prices that could increase.
Due to low Rhine levels, the OMV Group increased its fuel imports through the Danube tenfold, it said late last month.
Low water levels on the Rhine have recently prompted Switzerland to free oil from its emergency reserves, lowering mandatory oil stock levels by 6.5%. Switzerland supplies itself with oil via two main routes: the Rhine and rail transport. The low water level of the Rhine has led to a drastic reduction in the amount of products transported on the river, while cross-border rail traffic to Switzerland is experiencing massive cancellations and delays due to a lack of staff and ongoing repair work. declared the government on July 22. The previous time that Switzerland reduced the mandatory oil stock threshold was in the summer of 2018, a very dry summer that resulted in a sharp reduction in transport capacity on the Rhine.
In short, Russia this time has nothing to do with the German difficulties, which depend more on adverse weather and poor planning.
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The article Germany risks running out of diesel, but Russia has little to do with it… comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-germania-rischia-di-restare-senza-gasolio-ma-la-russia-centra-poco/ on Fri, 05 Aug 2022 07:00:26 +0000.