LONDON: Benchmark diesel refining margins in northwest Europe hit a two-month high on Thursday, buoyed by refinery outages.
Total's 230,000 barrel-per-day Leuna refinery in Germany has declared force majeure on refined product shipments as a result of the contamination of Russian Urals crude, three trade sources said on Thursday.
Industry monitor Genscape reported that a 200,000 bpd crude unit at BP's 377,000 bpd Rotterdam refinery has been shut. BP declined to comment.
Fuel oil stocks in independent storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose by 34.4 percent in the week to Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global, previously PJK International, showed.
The rise came on the back of increasing imports, Insight Global's Lars van Wageningen said.
Gasoil stocks were slightly higher on rising imports from the United States and as demand up the Rhine river decreased slightly, van Wageningen said.
US distillate stockpiles, which include diesel and heating oil, rose last week by 84,000 barrels, versus expectations for a 1 million-barrel drop, EIA data showed.
However, inventories on the US East Coast dropped to their lowest since July 2018, the data showed.
Around 250,000 barrels per day of European refining capacity, or roughly 2pc of the region's demand, is estimated to have been impacted by the closure of the Druzhba pipeline following a contamination of crude oil, the International Energy Agency said.
Four people were arrested and addresses raided in Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium in a joint Anglo-Dutch investigation into biodiesel trading at British road fuel supplier Greenergy, the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said on Thursday.
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