The docks of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife have inaugurated this 2026 under a leaden sky that responds not only to the weather but to a perfect storm in the distilled markets. The bunkering sector in the Islands, an economic lifeline of the archipelago and a thermometer of Atlantic trade, is facing a scenario that industry veterans describe as unprecedented in its severity: a combination of depressed prices, anemic demand, and a regulatory straitjacket threatening to suffocate the operational margins of suppliers.
The dynamics are relentless. According to the latest data from Ship & Bunker, the price of VLSFO (very low sulfur fuel oil) is heading towards $440/mt in the short term, with projections that place it below the barrier of $450/mt until well into 2027. For the Canary ports, which have cemented their competitiveness in volume and supply agility, this price drop — driven by increased OPEC+ production and a global supply reaching 108.7 million barrels per day this year — is a double-edged sword. While it alleviates the treasury of major shipping lines, it leaves the archipelago’s suppliers in a position of extreme vulnerability.
The End of the Volume Era
The myth of post-pandemic recovery has faded. Although global traffic grew a timid 1.9% last year, bunkering activity levels are still failing to reach the 2019 benchmark. In the case of the Canary Islands, the situation is particularly sensitive; the International Energy Agency (IEA) has already ruled that global demand will stagnate at 5 million b/d by 2030. With increasingly efficient engines and the implementation of stricter emission regulations in European waters, growth based solely on moving more tons seems a thing of the past.
‘I have been in this business for a long time and I have never seen it this bad for so long,’ acknowledges a businessman from the port of Las Palmas who requests not to be identified. This confession resonates strongly in the offices of La Luz and Tenerife, where the margin for error for small and medium suppliers has been reduced to the bare minimum.
The Regulatory Screw and Credit Risk
To the decline in revenues is added a structural increase in costs. The EU emission regulations have introduced an administrative and financial complexity that does not understand low crude prices. Canary suppliers find themselves caught in a vise: they must finance increasingly costly operations in terms of compliance and risk management while revenues per ton stagnate.
The low-margin environment has triggered alarms about credit risk. In a market where fuel is delivered long before being paid for, the exposure to delays in payments or defaults by owners with tight balances is a latent threat. Compliance with international sanctions adds an extra layer of risk that requires constant vigilance, further increasing the cost of every liter supplied.
For the Canary ports, 2026 is not just a year of resilience, but of forced transformation. Survival no longer depends on the price of a barrel, but on the ability to integrate technology — such as artificial intelligence to optimize staffing — and to navigate a sea of regulations that penalize the conventional business model. The Atlantic is still there, but the rules of the game have changed forever.
News written by Pedro Marrero. Edited and verified by José L. Jiménez. Cross-referenced information without institutional filters. This analysis has not been funded by official advertising nor conditioned by lobbying interests.
