Rhine River Closure

[Alan de Enfield]

 

Rhine River Drought: A Closure Puts 400,000 Barrels a Day of Oil Trade at Risk - Bloomberg

 

A closure of the Rhine River could disrupt the daily trade of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil products, piling yet more pressure on Europe’s energy-supply chain.

The water level at Kaub, west of Frankfurt, is forecast to drop below a critical 40-centimeter mark (under 16 inches) on Friday, and to 33 centimeters on Monday. At that point, it becomes uneconomical for many barges to carry goods through the waypoint, limiting supplies to parts of Germany and Switzerland.

 

“Rhine closure could disrupt 400,000 barrels a day of oil-product trade,” consultant Facts Global Energy said in a report dated Aug. 10. “A major disruption to an important gasoil/diesel supply route from Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp to inland Europe could not come at a worse time.”

 

 

Inland Europe is already short of diesel-type fuel, a result of outages at multiple refineries concentrated around the Austria-Germany border. More switching from expensive natural gas to oil by industry will also likely increase demand “at the margin,” FGE said.

 

The Rhine is the single most important method of transport for oil products from Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp to Germany and Switzerland. Last year, 240,000 barrels a day were hauled upriver by barge for unloading in Germany, with a further 50,000 barrels a day of gasoil/diesel, jet fuel/kerosene and gasoline shipped upstream to Switzerland, and unloaded near Basel. 

 

Fuel is also barged downriver, with 90,000 barrels a day -- mostly gasoline -- sent last year from Germany for unloading in the Netherlands and Belgium.

[howardang]

The BBC News had a piece about this on this mornings News bulletin, showing the extent of the problem which was quite dramatic,  although the reporter did make the comment that it was not yet as bad as a similar occurrence about two or so years ago. She also made the point about how much trade is carried out on the river and that many businesses depend heavily on the delivery of fuel etc by barge and that it is undoubtedly going to cause problems unless we all get some rain before too long!

 

Howard