ITALY DATA: June road fuel demand at 20-mth high, July may be even stronger

22 Jul 2021

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - Road fuel demand in Italy in June reached a 20-month high of 2.735 million mt, with gasoline deliveries gaining 14.6% on the month to 661,000 mt and diesel growing 8.8% to 2.074 million mt, according to government data released Thursday.

Total gasoline demand was at the highest level since July 2019, when it was 701,000 mt and it was also flat to June 2019, when deliveries were again 661,000 mt.

Deliveries of diesel were the highest since October 2019, when demand was 2.131 million mt, and was up 4.3% against June 2019 when it was 1.988 million mt.

This meant that diesel was above the pre-pandemic level for the first time since the pandemic started and gasoline greater or equal for the second time.

LPG used for transport gained 10.7% on the month to 134,000 mt, a 9-month high and up 2.3% from 2019.

Meanwhile, jet consumption also hit a 10-month high of 172,000 mt following a 31% rise from May, but remained 63% below the June 2019 level.

Mobility data indicates a stronger July

The uptick in transport fuel demand chimes with positive mobility data from Google and toll data from operator Atlantia for June.

Google data at the time showed a 14.8 percentage point mobility gain on the month versus a January 2020 baseline to +15.2%, while Atlantia data showed toll usage versus year-ago levels up by 3.1 points from May to -9.2%.

Mobility and toll data released this week indicated that demand in July was likely to be improved again, with personal mobility in the week ending July 16 at +24.5%, up 9.3 points from the prior month average, while toll usage for the week ending July 18 was -2.4% below the 2019 equivalent level, up 6.8 points from the June average.

However, even though the number of daily cases in Italy has eased massively since a third-wave peak of around 24,000 cases in March, cases have been creeping up in the first weeks of July, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and the country remains in a state of emergency.