German Gasoline Demand Holds While Russian Supply Dries Up and Saudi Stocks Overhang
AGEB preliminary data show German gasoline consumption fell just 0.6% in H1 2026, an outlier as diesel and heating oil demand slumped under sustained high energy prices.
German oil product consumption fell 8% in the first half of 2026, but gasoline proved far stickier: demand dropped just 0.6% over the period, according to preliminary data from the Working Group on Energy Balances (AGEB), cited by dpa on Tuesday (2026-08-04). Overall energy demand fell 1.9%. The numbers land as Ukrainian attacks have stripped Russian refineries of capacity and as Saudi Arabia worked through a gasoline inventory overhang that suppressed its import demand months earlier.4
The split within Germany's oil barrel is sharp. Diesel fell close to 6%, jet fuel dropped 1%, and light heating oil plummeted more than 30%, AGEB data show — demand destruction concentrated in fuel types tied to freight, industry and heating. Gasoline shed almost nothing by comparison. Road fuel demand has resisted the price pressure that flattened the rest of the product slate.4
Coal consumption in Germany rose 7% in the first half and natural gas was up 1.3%, despite the country's stated ambitions to phase out both. Wind and solar reached 22.2% of total energy consumption over the period, up from 20.9% a year earlier, AGEB said. Hydrocarbons still provided 75.9% of Germany's total energy use.4
Ukraine's sustained campaign against Russian refining infrastructure has removed a significant source of global gasoline supply. Ukrainian strikes from March 2026 pushed Russian crude processing to an average of 3.91 million barrels per day in early July (2026-07-13), the lowest in more than 21 years, Rigzone reported. Moscow banned exports of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel in response — a restriction that remains in place and has tightened the global product balance.3,2
Saudi Arabia's import behaviour adds another layer to the picture, though the data are older. Traders reported in late May (2026-05-21) that the kingdom planned to cut gasoline imports by 29% to around 57,000 barrels per day in June, from 80,000 bpd the prior month. Saudi Arabia typically takes 60,000 to 70,000 bpd, traders said, but imports had been elevated after an outage at a 44,000 bpd hydrocracking unit at the Ras Tanura refinery.1
Aramco had restarted the Riyadh refinery after a 39-day shutdown, and traders expected the Ras Tanura hydrocracking unit to come back online in June (2026-06). Onshore storage was near capacity by late May, with as much as 1.5 million barrels pushed into seaborne storage. The inventory build reflected months of opportunistic purchasing when global prices were weaker.1
With Saudi demand expected to fall, Mediterranean suppliers shifted focus toward the United States, where the summer driving season was pulling cargoes westward. The transatlantic arbitrage ran in favour of those flows, traders said, diverting European supply away from the Middle East route.1
RBOB Gasoline front-month futures fell 2.69% to $2.89 a gallon on Tuesday (2026-08-04), and ICE Brent crude front-month shed 2.06% to $84.43 a barrel in the same session. The price weakness in gasoline, despite Russian export bans constraining supply, points to demand-side pressure — visible in AGEB's German numbers and in the Saudi inventory accumulation — absorbing the upside.4,1
Russian export restrictions show no sign of reversal, and Aramco's maintenance-driven import surge is now behind it. German gasoline demand has resisted the price pressure that crushed diesel and heating oil through the first half, but the next AGEB release will show whether that stickiness is starting to erode as high energy prices extend into H2 2026.4,3,1