UK's road fuels demand recovery in slow lane despite rising sales

London — The UK's road fuel sales still stood at 61% of pre-crisis levels last week as demand recovers slowly from a mid-April low during the height of the country's pandemic lockdown measures, according to official government figures.

Excluding Northern Ireland, sales of gasoline and diesel per filling station averaged 10,796 liters in the week to May 31, compared with 17,690 liters in the eight weeks prior to March 23, the department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) said June 4.

The UK, Europe's second-biggest fuel market after Germany, was officially put into lockdown on March 23 and began easing the measure on May 10. Average pump sales have now risen 90% from the week to April 12 when sales averaged 5,676 liters per site, the data shows.

Demand for key transport fuels in the UK slumped to a multiyear low of 2 million mt in April, down 59% from year-earlier levels and the lowest since at least 1998, according to UK data submitted to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI).

Demand for kerosene, most of which is jet fuel, was the hardest hit by the lockdown measures, falling to 1.14 million mt in April, down 60% from year-earlier levels. Sales of gasoline and diesel fell to 1.46 million mt in April, down 58% from a year before, the figures show.

Lagging German recovery

Globally, April is widely seen as having suffered the most severe impact from the pandemic on oil markets with up to 30 million b/d of global demand destruction due to travel curbs and lockdowns.

The recovery in the UK's driving activity has lagged that of Germany, where traffic activity is now well above pre-crisis levels.

UK map routing activity, a proxy for road fuel demand, stood 20% below January 13 levels on June 2, according to the latest Apple mobility data.

Road transport accounts for more than half of oil demand in the UK with gasoline and diesel meeting around 98% of transport energy needs. Gasoline sales last year averaged 299,820 b/d and diesel sales averaged 546,770 b/d, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics estimates.