US jet fuel imports are set to hit a two-year high this month after Nigeria's Dangote refinery pushed barrels to North America, which should lower prices of the aviation fuel in the peak summer travel season, trade analysts and storage brokers said.
The shipments by the 650,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Dangote refinery, Africa's largest, highlight its potential to reshape global fuel trading dynamics by creating a new swing supplier in the Atlantic Basin.
It has shown signs of success in competing with European refiners on gasoline exports, and the jet fuel shipments to the US could challenge domestic producers' economics in the largest fuel consuming nation.
Six vessels carrying about 1.7-million barrels of jet fuel from the Dangote refinery arrived at US ports this month, data from ship-tracking service Kpler showed. Another vessel, Hafnia Andromeda, is set to arrive at the Everglades terminal on March 29 with about 348,000 barrels of jet fuel, the data showed.
Total US jet fuel imports so far this month stood at around 226,000 bpd, the most since February 2023, the data showed.
The Dangote refinery started production last January after years of construction delays, and ramped up to about 85% of capacity in early February, allowing it to sell more fuel to international markets.
Dangote is unlikely to be a regular jet fuel supplier to the US, but a maintenance-related shutdown of the Phillips 66 Bayway refinery in New Jersey helped open a rare arbitrage opportunity for flows from Nigeria to the US, said Sparta Commodities analyst James Noel-Beswick.
The window is likely to close soon or shrink significantly due to elevated US inventories of the aviation fuel, Noel-Beswick said.
Demand to lease storage tanks for jet fuel in Houston and New York harbour next month is averaging about 700,000 barrels on storage broker TankTiger's platform, five to six times the average monthly demand, said TankTiger COO Steven Barsamian.
The surge in demand, partly due to the influx of supply from Nigeria, is likely to lower jet fuel prices in the US ahead of peak summer travel season, Barsamian said.
Despite lower prices, air travel during summer could be dampened by economic headwinds from a stock market sell-off and waning consumer confidence, said Sparta's Noel-Beswick.
US jet fuel stocks ended last month at 45.2-million barrels, the highest for the month since 1999, data from the US energy information administration (EIA) showed.
US refiners' yield of jet fuel hit a record last year, reflecting stronger demand relative to other transportation fuels, the EIA said on Monday. The agency expects US jet fuel consumption to touch a record in 2026.
Reuters
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