The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 is hitting Jet Fuels far much more than it does Road Fuels.
Total global demand for road fuels will fall by 10.1% in 2020, or by 4.8MillionBPD year-on-year. The Rystad estimates Road fuel demand in 2019 to have been 47.4MillionBPD. It now sees this number dropping to about 42.6MillionBPD in 2020.
But the Norwegian conslutancy expects jet fuel will be hit the hardest. We expect global commercial air traffic will fall by at least 51% this year versus the levels seen in 2019, which we estimate stood at around 99,700 flights per day. For 2021, we expect around 76,800 flights per day. These numbers will be revised as operators continue to cut routes.
Many distressed airlines are facing heavy cost cuts and are laying off unprecedented numbers of employees as many non-essential routes are closed.
As a base case we now assume that the common summer air travel peak will not occur at all this year. We see global jet fuel demand falling by almost 41.4% year-on-year, or by at least 3MillionBPD. Last year’s demand for jet fuel was about 7.2MillionBPD.
Jet fuel demand in April was as low as 2.9 MillionBPD, and shrank further to 2.8Million BPD in May 2020.
In 2021, jet fuel demand is expected to average 6.1MillionBPD
