Bunker Stocks Run 30% Below Seasonal Norms at the Big Three Hubs
Singapore VLSFO is up 76% since the conflict began, and lead times have stretched to sixteen days
A global bunker squeeze is working its way into owners' voyage costs. Fuel oil inventories at Singapore, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub and Fujairah are running around 30% below their three-year seasonal averages.
Price has moved faster than the crude behind it. In Singapore, the world's largest bunkering port, very low sulphur fuel oil was priced just under $825 per tonne on 1 September, up 76% since the Iran conflict began, on figures from maritime technology company ZeroNorth. Brent rose about 40% over the same period, so the marine fuel premium over crude has widened rather than merely tracked it.
The physical market has tightened alongside the paper one. Singapore suppliers were quoting VLSFO lead times of nine to sixteen days in early September, as reduced supplier availability and a shortage of blending components constrained prompt supply. At Fujairah, heavy distillate inventories fell 15% in the week ended 31 August to 3.122 million barrels, their lowest in two months, after a 32% fall the week before. Cargo availability and ex-wharf offers there have also thinned as spot demand strengthened.
Northwest Europe is the least bad of the three. Independently held fuel oil stocks in the ARA hub averaged 5.30 million barrels in early September, 15% above the August average but still 18% below February levels. Prompt availability at Rotterdam and its neighbours was tight enough for suppliers to recommend lead times of five to seven days.
Two forces are reinforcing each other. Fuel oil exports have fallen, and refinery margins are pulling barrels into higher-value products such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel rather than into the residual pool that bunkers come from. Energy Aspects expects the global fuel oil deficit to reach 218,000 barrels per day in the third quarter of 2026, which would be the first quarterly shortfall it has estimated since the third quarter of 2025, when the gap was 6,000 bpd.
"Due to the protracted supply disruption in the Middle East, we expect fuel oil supply to remain critically tight in the third quarter," said Valerie Panopio, an analyst at Rystad Energy.
The export side explains the depth of it. Russian fuel oil exports fell to a record low of 591,000 bpd in August, against an average above 860,000 bpd in 2025, on Kpler data going back to 2017. Middle East fuel oil exports averaged about 447,000 bpd between March and August, down 45% year on year. Kuwait's Al-Zour refinery, previously a major exporter, shipped a single 26,000 bpd cargo between March and early September, against roughly 191,000 bpd in January and February.
For owners the effect is a widening spread between planned and realised voyage costs, and it lands hardest on long-haul trades, where bunkers are the largest single line in the operating account and where a sixteen-day lead time removes the option of buying where fuel is cheapest.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 10 September 2026.
