The end of the tank discount means that fuel is running low

Dusseldorf A brightly lit Esso gas station in Frankfurt, in front of it a red and white barrier tape: the closed petrol pumps due to a lack of fuel upset a DZ Bank manager on Monday evening so much that he immediately documented the misery on Twitter. He complained that a second service station nearby could no longer sell him any petrol either.

The German banking metropolis is particularly affected by the lack of fuel these days, but by no means an isolated case.

“In addition to Frankfurt, we also receive such reports from Munich and in the area around the Dutch border,” reports Jürgen Ziegner, Managing Director of the Central Association of the Petrol Station Industry (ZTG). Xanten in particular is suffering from an acute shortage of fuel.

In some places in the Ruhr area there is a lack of cheap E10 petrol, but most often there is a lack of diesel, explains Stephan Zieger from the Federal Association of Independent Petrol Stations (BFT). A large part of it in southern Germany is loaded via the Karlsruhe hub, where the low water level in the Rhine is causing delivery disruptions.

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For Zieger, however, this is by no means the only cause of the bottlenecks. “For several reasons, stations are currently running dry,” says the association’s managing director from Bonn. Even the best advance planning doesn’t help. “Sometimes it hits our member companies like lightning.”

Onslaught by last-minute savers

The tense situation is mainly due to the end of the fuel concession. At the beginning of June, the Federal Minister of Finance lowered the energy tax on petrol and diesel in order to compensate Germany’s motorists for the enormous rise in fuel prices as a result of the Ukraine war. The liter E10 was thus 35.2 cents cheaper, the same amount of diesel by 16.7 cents. Now the so-called “tank discount” ends at the end of the month, from Thursday the old and therefore higher tax rates apply again.

Most motorists in Germany take this as an opportunity to fill up their own tanks again – even if the prices at the petrol pumps have already risen significantly in the past few days in anticipation of the onslaught.

Gas station in Bremen before the start of the tank discount

As early as Monday evening, the queues of cars in front of the diesel and petrol pumps were partially backed up on the streets. “On Sunday, our sales tripled compared to normal days,” reports the leaseholder of a free gas station near Heidelberg. For the first time in years he heard the acoustic signal in his station that warns of an empty tank.

The bottlenecks are also being fueled by motorists from neighboring countries, who have been heading into Germany for cheap refueling since the beginning of June. Shortly before the end of the tank discount, fuel tourists from Denmark, France, Austria and the Netherlands overrun regions around Xanten or Saarland. Even Czechs commute to the Bavarian Forest before the end of the month to fill up cheaply. As has been the case in recent years, things should go in the opposite direction there from September 1st.

The erratic demand hits the gas station operators in the most difficult replenishment situation for four years. Because the lack of rainfall and high summer temperatures have drastically lowered the Rhine level, the river is now almost impassable for tankers. “The load of 2,000 to 3,000 tons, which is usually transported by one freighter alone, currently has to be distributed to several barges depending on the water level,” reports Steffen Bauer, head of the river shipping company HGK.

>> Read here: The low water in the Rhine is also a political failure

This leads to significant capacity gaps, especially on the Rhine, which is important for oil and petrol transport. “We are currently waiting much longer for supplies,” reports BFT Managing Director Stephan Zieger.

At the same time, prices jump as a result. “The transport of one tonne of diesel or petrol from Rotterdam to Basel usually costs 20 euros,” reports the Central Association of the Petrol Station Industry. “Currently the price is 260 euros.” The enormously increased logistics costs are naturally being passed on to the tank customers these days, says Jürgen Ziegner.

Refineries are plagued by delivery problems

There are also problems at the loading points of the refineries on the Rhine. Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rheinland, one of the largest of them, announced a few days ago that capacities had been reduced. At its Wesseling location between Cologne and Bonn, the fairway depth is still sufficient for tankers. However, because the shoreline has increased significantly, the hoses for pumping out the fuel have proven to be too short.

For this reason, not only petrol stations in the supply area south of the Rhine bottleneck near Kaub in Rhineland-Palatinate are affected by the lack of fuel. “There is also a surprising shortage of diesel and petrol in the Cologne area,” reports a manager at the Aral petrol station chain. The BP subsidiary also supplies itself via the loading station in Wesseling.

The end of the tank discount not only causes frustration among drivers, it is also viewed critically by the German Cartel Office. “We will continue to look very closely and provide information on how prices are developing and what will happen if the tax reduction ends on September 1st,” warned the head of the authorities, Andreas Mundt, on Tuesday. So far, little is known about what actually happens between buying crude oil and selling it at the gas station, he said. The first interim results will be presented in the autumn.

More: Rain hardly changes the Rhine level: the risk of supply bottlenecks also increases for petrol stations

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