Rhine Oil Product Flow Blocked for Third Day by Floods, PJK Says

Oil product barge trading is stalled for at least a third day along parts of the Rhine River as floods and high waters prevent barges from traveling to the upper stretches, according to PJK International BV.
“Oil majors and importers are not pressed to do any business,” Pieter Kulsen, founder of the Netherlands-based researcher, said today by phone from Breda. “There is demand for next week to Switzerland and France, but nobody is offering. It will take until at least Friday to normalize.”
The river isn’t navigable upstream from Koblenz in Germany, which means Frankfurt, Mannheim, Strasbourg in France and Basel in Switzerland can’t receive oil product shipments, Joachim Hessler, operations manager at Maintank Schiffahrtsgesellschaft mbH, a barge-owner based in Woerth near Frankfurt, said yesterday in an e-mail.
The water level at Kaub, Germany, which is about 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Dusseldorf, rose to 7.19 meters (24 feet) today, the highest since at least 2006, data from the German Federal Institute of Hydrology show. Barge freight rates haven’t been affected by the halt.
Source: Bloomberg