Europe is projected to face a fourth-quarter jet fuel supply deficit of around 510,000 barrels per day, increasing its dependence on long-distance cargoes as disruption to established Middle Eastern supply routes alters the continent’s refining and import balance.
Energy Aspects expects Europe to remain structurally short during the quarter, while forecasting surpluses of around 18,000 barrels per day in the United States and 419,000 barrels per day across Asia-Pacific.
The figures describe a regional imbalance rather than a global absence of jet fuel. Product is available elsewhere, but additional volumes have to move further through the international refining, storage, and tanker system before reaching European buyers.
South Korea has become one of the more prominent replacement sources. European imports from the country are running at around 129,000 barrels per day during September, the highest level since October 2022, according to flow data cited by Reuters.
That increase coincides with unusually high South Korean refinery output. The country produced almost 13.89 million barrels of jet fuel in July, its highest monthly volume in seven years, as refiners increased crude processing.
Europe is pulling those additional barrels into a market with relatively little inventory buffer. Independently held jet fuel stocks in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp refining and storage hub fell to their lowest level in seven years during the week to 10 September.
Low stocks do not mean airports are necessarily running out of fuel, but they reduce the margin available to absorb delayed tankers, unexpected refinery outages, or further disruptions to major export regions.
Europe has historically balanced domestic refinery production with imported aviation fuel. Middle Eastern refineries have played an important role because they combine large, relatively modern plants with established tanker routes into European markets.
Disruption since the outbreak of the Iran war has reduced those flows materially. European buyers have responded by taking more jet fuel from Nigeria, the United States, Canada, South Korea, and other suppliers able to move surplus product into the region.
The result is a longer and more expensive physical supply chain. A cargo travelling from northeast Asia ties up a tanker and working capital for far longer than a shipment moving from a nearby Mediterranean or Middle Eastern refinery.
That trade only becomes attractive when price differences are sufficient to cover the additional freight and financing cost. The spread between Asian and European jet fuel benchmarks is currently wide enough to keep the arbitrage open.
South Korea’s role illustrates how the global refining system responds to regional shortages. Refiners increase runs where margins justify it, traders secure cargoes, and freight moves product towards the market offering the strongest netback after transport costs.
Jet fuel is part of the middle-distillate family alongside diesel and gasoil, meaning the market cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of the refinery barrel.
Refiners can adjust yields to some extent, but they cannot switch unlimited volumes from one product to another. Crude quality, plant configuration, processing severity, specification requirements, and competing demand determine how much additional jet fuel can be produced.
Diesel markets are also tight, which increases the competition for middle-distillate production. When both aviation fuel and diesel are commanding strong margins, refiners have less flexibility to redirect output without affecting another valuable product stream.
Europe’s domestic refineries cannot simply eliminate the deficit by increasing throughput indefinitely. Plants are constrained by maintenance, equipment limits, crude availability, environmental requirements, and the economics of the wider product slate.
Newer international refineries have consequently become increasingly important. Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has emerged as a significant supplier of aviation fuel into Europe, while rising Chinese product exports provide another potential source of incremental Asian barrels.
Those developments improve the number of available supply routes but also make Europe more exposed to global shipping conditions. Tanker availability, freight rates, port congestion, storage capacity, and geopolitical disruption all become part of the aviation-fuel equation.
The industrial effect extends beyond airlines. Refinery economics influence crude purchasing, operating rates, diesel availability, petrochemical feedstock supply, and export decisions, with strong jet fuel margins potentially changing how individual plants optimise their output.
Storage also becomes more valuable when supply routes lengthen. A market dependent on cargoes travelling across several weeks of ocean voyage needs enough inventory to bridge the gap between scheduled deliveries and unexpected interruptions.
The seven-year low in ARA stocks therefore provides an important context for the projected 510,000-barrel-per-day fourth-quarter deficit. Europe can still attract replacement fuel, but it is doing so with less physical buffer than usual.
The fourth-quarter outcome will depend on whether Asian and North American refinery runs remain high, how quickly European inventories recover, and whether existing Middle Eastern flows stabilise.
For now, the system is adapting by extending its supply lines. South Korea’s rise as a major September supplier demonstrates that sufficient price signals can draw fuel across considerable distances, but the same development also shows how far Europe is having to reach to balance its aviation-fuel market.
