LPG market balance for the half-year 2022
20.9.2022
The Polish LPG market reacted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine with a dynamic acceleration of the trends observed for several years. The doubling of gas imports from Sweden was accompanied by a decrease in the share of supplies from the east.
In the first half of 2022, global LPG sales in Poland increased by 8.5% compared to the first half of 2021.
The relatively favourable price relationship of LPG compared to conventional fuel prices and the overall economic situation in view of the rising prices of energy carriers have contributed to maintaining the upward trend in the LPG industry. It is worth recalling that autogas accounted for almost 75% of total sales in 2021 - therefore, the total increase in consumption is primarily due to increased demand in the transport sector.
Below we present the semi-annual balance due to the origin of the product and the consumption of liquefied LPG gas in 2021-2022.
In the first half of 2022, the supply structure changed significantly. As in previous years, the main source of supply is imports, the volume of which amounted to 1 182.2 thousand tons (an increase of 22.8% compared to 2021), however, the sources of supply have changed.
In the first half of 2022, compared to last year, the dominance of supplies from the countries that were the largest suppliers of the product in 2021: from Russia and from Sweden remained dominant. Deliveries from Russia accounted for 50.4% of all imports, while in the same period of 2021 it was 62.9% (a decrease of 12.5 pp). Sweden's share of total imports of the product amounted to 32.2% in the first half of 2022, which represents an increase of as much as 13.3 pp.
The remaining quantity, i.e. almost 210 thousand tons, is in a number of countries, the most important of which were deliveries from Lithuania and Kazakhstan.
In the first half of 2022, 427.9 thousand tons (36%) of fuel were imported by sea, 625.1 thousand tons by rail (53%) and by road - 96.8 thousand tons (8%).
Compared to LPG imports, there was a significant increase in the importance of deliveries by sea (+9%) in the whole of 2021, while deliveries by road transport decreased (-5.8%).
In the first half of 2022, 166.8 thousand tons of LPG were also exported from Poland (excluding 2901), whereas a year ago it was more than 96 thousand tons. This increase is largely attributable to re-exports to Ukraine. In the first half of 2022, 58.3 thousand tons of product (including 2 thousand tons of product with code 2901 1000) went from Poland to Ukraine.
