Europe faces diesel crunch – Vitol

The Swiss trader is relatively sanguine on Europe replacing Russian crude, but the products puzzle is more challenging

“Within Vitol, we are thinking one to two to three million barrels a day could be lost, but a lot does depend on Asia’s reaction to the flows that normally come out [through Russia’s] Asian ports,” commodity trading heavyweight Vitol’s CEO Russell Hardy told the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit on Tuesday. “I think we are going to find out more over the next couple of weeks as to which buyers are going to boycott those flows and therefore how much might get left behind.” But Hardy feels that, if the number of crude barrels lost—rather than simply redirected—remains at manageable levels, the market should be able to cope. European refined products dynamics, particularly for diesel, a