Fuel inventories in Brazil will be monitored daily

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The ANP (National Agency for Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels) declared this Tuesday (22) a warning on the supply of fuel in the country, determining that refineries and distributors inform their stocks daily to monitor the supply.

The decision takes place against a backdrop of growing demand that increased Brazil’s dependence on diesel oil imports amid uncertainties about the evolution of international fuel prices.

In a note, the agency says that, “at the moment, the supply is regular throughout the national territory” and that the warning “only aims to allow this monitoring of stocks and imports from producers and distributors to be intensified”.

The measure follows an initiative of the MME (Ministry of Mines and Energy), which created a working group on the 11th to study measures to avoid problems in the fuel supply in the country in the face of the uncertainties generated by the war in Ukraine.

Distributors and resellers had been complaining of occasional difficulties in finding fuel in view of the reduction in private imports when Petrobras’ prices had large lags in relation to international quotations.

The state-owned company itself used the risk of shortages as one of the justifications for the mega-increase in the prices of gasoline, diesel and cooking gas implemented on the 11th.

The ANP cites “current world geopolitics” as justification. The warning mechanism, says the agency, “allows dynamic monitoring of supply, subsidizing possible preventive actions”, and is also used in situations such as refinery stoppages or interruptions in pipelines.

With the implementation of this mechanism, refineries and distributors have to inform by 12:00 each day how much fuel they have in their stocks.

Executives from the fuel sector consulted by the sheet say that there are still no signs of serious supply problems, but the risk remains, as the period between the decision to import and the arrival of the ships takes between 45 and 60 days.

Sales of diesel oil in the country grew 5% in the first two months, compared to the same period of the previous year. Gasoline sales grew 8.4%, with the product’s biggest advantage over ethanol at the beginning of the year.

With greater consumption, net diesel imports more than doubled in the period, reaching 2.2 billion liters, according to the agency’s data, leading to external dependence to 41%, against an average of 25% in recent years.

In gasoline, there was also significant growth in foreign dependence, which reached 16.5%, with net imports of 776 million liters in the first two months of the year.

The readjustments promoted by Petrobras reduced the lags in relation to international quotations, but the pressure for changes in the state-owned company’s price policy still generates great uncertainty about the operations of importing fuels into the country.

A week ago, when international oil prices plummeted for fear of a new wave of Covid-19 in China, the price of diesel in the domestic market became more expensive than abroad, triggering a wave of charges on Petrobras, but the situation was soon reversed.

According to data from Abicom (Brazilian Association of Fuel Importers), this Tuesday the lag in the domestic price of diesel is 14%, or R$ 0.72 per liter. In gasoline, the difference is R$ 0.49 per liter, a lag of 11%.

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