What is European Fuel Oil?
Platts European fuel oil price assessments, by S&P Global Commodity Insights, cover both the high and low sulfur spheres, divided between 3.5% and 1% maximum sulfur, cargo and barge marketplaces.
Fuel oil has a number of uses globally, though the largest market for the heavy, residual refined product is bunker fuel, where the material fuels large, sea-going vessels. This market sees upwards of 250 million mt demand a year, globally, and our assessments are used to benchmark a great deal of this exposure.
Platts European fuel oil assessments are also used in electricity oil/gas indexed pricing and dark spread formations. The European utility market, now mostly dominated by Mediterranean outlets, sees a relatively small demand pool for low sulfur fuel oil from oil-fired utility plants.
Platts fuel oil assessments are also used to price bitumen, and their reach goes further still into the high and low sulfur straight-run fuel oil markets.
As with most refined oil product markets, each single traded clip reported by S&P Global Commodity Insights in its Market on Close assessment process may well trade more than once before it finds its way into the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp storage hub, the European cargo market or ship-owner end-user demand pool. Through our Market on Close price assessment process, we report on hundreds of deals a month equating to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of material.
S&P Global Commodity Insights' analysis of trading activity culminates in the publication of the Platts FOB Rotterdam 3.5% and 1% fuel oil barges, Platts Northwest European 3.5% sulfur and 1% sulfur fuel oil cargoes and Platts Mediterranean European 3.5% sulfur and 1% sulfur fuel oil cargoes — our daily fuel oil price assessments of both high and low sulfur fuel oil in the barge and cargo marketplaces.
We also provide daily market analysis for the European fuel oil complex and assessment rationales for each benchmark oil price assessment within the markets we report on.