Does the Suez Canal shutdown affect global oil shipments?

A ship rescue company said a giant container ship blocking the course of the Suez Canal could remain stranded for days, hampering the movement of oil and fuel shipments between Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

How much oil crosses the canal?

Of the 39.2 million barrels per day of crude oil imported by sea in 2020, 1.74 million barrels per day passed through the canal, according to Kepler’s tanker traffic data.

What is the direction of the flow of crude oil?

Crude oil and refined products circulate in both directions in the Suez Canal, which is 193 km long. In 2020, Europe imported 550,000 barrels per day of crude from sources east of Suez, most via the canal, according to Kepler figures.

Imports from South and East Asia through the channel reached 1.27 million barrels per day in June 2020, but deliveries subsequently declined to 310,000 barrels per day in November.

What about refined products?

Slightly less than the nine percent, or 1.54 million barrels per day, of global imports of refined products passed through the Suez Canal last year, according to Kepler. Naphtha, a raw material for the plastics industry, constitutes a large part of the refined product supply that uses the channel.

Kepler said two distillate tankers loaded with diesel and jet fuel were waiting Thursday to sail to the Mediterranean, while two tankers waited for Nafta to embark east.

Are there pipelines parallel to the canal?

The 320 km SUMED pipeline connects the Gulf of Suez to the Mediterranean Sea and carries 80% of the oil destined for Europe, according to the Sumed website.

The capacity of the line is around 2.8 million barrels per day, but it is used at much lower rates most of the time. According to the US Energy Information Administration, pipeline throughput was around 1.3 million bpd in 2018.