Fuel sales on SPIMEX expected to grow 16% in 2024, already amount to third of domestic market

MOSCOW. Dec 10 (Interfax) - Fuel sales on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) could grow by more than 16% in 2024 and sales of the main oil products this year already make up a third of all fuel supplies on the domestic market, SPIMEX senior vice president Anton Karpov said in an interview with Interfax.

SPIMEX has been closing the year with record fuel sales for years now, he said. "In 2024, if the current sales dynamic continues, we'll reach another high of about 36 million tonnes," he said.

"With Russian domestic market consumption of 90 million-100 million tonnes per year, an exchange indicator of 36 million tonnes is a very high figure. Just a few years ago, 30 million tonnes seemed to us to be hard to achieve, and now annual growth averages 10%," Karpov said.

He said tentative figures show that fuel sales on the exchange will grow by more than 16% in 2024 compared to the previous year.

"The share of exchange sales of the main oil products on the exchange in 2024 amounts to a third of all fuel supplies on the domestic market. In 2023, one in four tonnes went through the exchange," Karpov said.

He said the high volumes were due to market participants getting a feel for the exchange mechanism and taking a liking to it, while the number of buyers has increased considerably in recent years. SPIMEX has become the main fuel sales channel for some oil companies and sales are far higher than the set regulatory requirements, Karpov said.

"The fuel market itself has mobilized, it's pushing the exchange to develop faster in the oil products section, be more flexible, expand horizons. For example, while before we had a small-scale wholesale program only with oil companies, this fall we launched an option with independent tank farms, and there's a sense that this will show interesting results in the near future. We expect the rollout of the [Russian Railways] commodities supply operator system, which will start working fully in 2025, will be a significant breakthrough for SPIMEX," Karpov said.