For now “it is completely absurd” to think of a major aviation crisis in Portugal, especially because there are solutions worked on with countries outside the Middle East. Still, the summer will be peak and it is possible that there will be readjustments
Europe has “about six weeks of jet fuel reserves” and some flights could start to be canceled “soon” if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened in the near future. The president of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, this Thursday, and has already raised alarms.
But “this is not the case”, explains commander José Correia Guedes to CNN Portugal, warning of an “alarmist” forecast, after the AIE stated that we are facing the “biggest energy crisis” that the agency has ever faced.
“Portugal has reserves for four months, Denmark for six, Italy and Germany for seven and France for eight”, he continues, highlighting that Europe is currently responsible for producing 65% of its needs.
According to the commander, the Portuguese company Galp, in Sines, produces jet fuel for Portuguese territory, providing “around 60%” of national needs. The rest, he says, “we will have to import, namely from Spain, which has eight refineries working and currently exports jet fuel”.
Economist Filipe Grilo warns precisely about the fact that Europe is not completely dependent on exports from the Middle East.
“We in Europe also produce jet fuel, which is refined in Spain, next door, which comes from oil that originates from Brazil, Nigeria, the USA. Therefore, there is another flow of oil that can then be refined into jet fuel”, he highlights, giving examples of countries from which fossil fuels imported by Portugal also come from.
The market itself has already started to react, guarantees the economist. Look at the “excess” exports conducted by Nigeria and the United States compared to previous values.
“This means that companies are currently spending more money on jet fuel because these routes are less efficient than those that typically exist in the Middle East. If there is a shortage, we also have to start cutting back on demand itself – the one that is less interesting for companies.”
In anticipation of a summer in which people will travel a lot by plane, “it is natural that there will be routes that, because the margin does not compensate, will be cancelled”, he argued, justifying the decision of the Dutch airline KLM, which has already guaranteed to operate 160 fewer flights next month due to possible fuel shortages.
In the same vein, Pedro Castro, an aviation expert, criticizes the “guessmanship” and the lack of “in-depth investigation” with which the announcement was made, despite recognizing that we are living in a “moment of tension”.
“Birol has this tradition of talking about scenarios in a pessimistic and often wrong way. We see someone with guesswork, without disclosing any deeper investigation, saying that in six weeks we will have fuel shortages in Europe, with several ‘ifs’.”
According to his analysis, carried out on CNN Portugal, Europe encompasses “600 commercial airports, 55 countries and several jet fuel suppliers”, so it is “completely absurd to say that a catastrophe of this magnitude will happen in a territory of this size”.
The concerns may be different for the United Kingdom, which may even have “very serious” fuel shortage problems, warns José Correia Guedes, as it is “very dependent on those imports”.
In Portugal, the forecast is that, “until the end of May, we won’t have any problems – the problem could, in fact, arise with the peak of summer, reaching June, because there are much more needs, many more flights”, he concludes.
