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Forget the medicines or rubber: Refined oil is Portugal’s largest export to the US – and is free from tariffs.
It works almost like an improved exchange: Portugal matters cross from the US, because it pays off. exports refined oil in the form of gasoline and other fuels.
“Refiners, including Portuguese – Galp – They buy the most advantageous raw, both from the point of view of quality, because it has influence on the costs of refining, and also from the price that is offered in international markets. This is an upstream of refining and which means the supply in raw materials, ”explains engineer António Comprido to.
“Then an independent market that has nothing to do with refined products – gasolines, oil gases, jet fuel, GPL, Anyway, all products that leave the raw refinement. This is another market, where obviously the refinement sells where it gets prices that are also most favorable to it, it works purely and simply in a market economy, ”says the secretary general of Portuguese fuel and lubricating companies (EPCOL).
It is fact that medicines and products like rubber are one of the most weighing in Portuguese exports to the US. In fact, if we consider packaged and uncoated pharmaceutical products, they have the largest slice of exports in Portugal for their 4th largest market.
But in fact, separately, It is refined oil who is the export champion Portuguese to the US. E – Jackpot – This product It is not covered by the rates.
According to data from, Portugal only sent 62 million euros of this product to the US alone. In 2024, sales volume surpassed the 1.07 billion euros.
But why don’t the US produce this product?
The answer is simple: they can’t. “Refining has some technical constraints,” says António Comprido. This is because producing refined oil from the raw will always generate a certain amount of gasoline, another of diesel, another of jet fuel, etc.
That is, the US has a great difficulty in producing gasoline, because producing it would generate an surplus of the other derivatives of the raw, And the problem of lack of flow could even influence the price of oil.
This is why Donald Trump did not see refined oil, says the engineer, who explains that “the US will not be able to exceed the gasoline deficit and the need to import from one moment to the next“.
He concludes: “The United States will continue to import gasoline, at least for many years, and there is no impact that tariffs do not focus on energy products, which includes gasoline.”
