“All tanks are more or less full right now,” a source in the Scandinavian oil product storage industry told OPIS. “The market is very crowded at the moment.”

Demand for tank storage in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway rose in the final quarter of last year, said the source. “They began filling up in the autumn and in November, in particular.”

Asked where demand for storage space in Scandinavia was strongest, he said, “Sweden is definitely seeing the greatest demand…. But there isn’t a lot of storage space in any of the Scandinavian countries.

“There may be some small ports that have space, but the storage units at the big harbors are pretty much full.”

Storage space in caverns connected to Swedish ports and jetties are also nearing capacity, said the source. “Sweden has a very large capacity for cavern storages — some are as small as 50,000 cubic meters but others are as large as 600,000 cubic meters — but they are all rented out and most of them are full, I understand.”

A second source in the industry also suggested that Finnish and Norwegian caverns were close to being filled. Referring to more conventional product storage tanks, the source added, “They have been full more or less for a while … demand increased steadily throughout 2015 and rose more late in the autumn.”

Satellite data suggest that vessels bound for Swedish ports have had to wait more than a week before discharging their cargoes. The Hafnia Magellan was chartered by Crudex to unload 30kt of diesel at Helsingborg, which has one of the largest individual tanks in Sweden. The vessel entered and stopped in the surrounding area on Jan. 11 but did not discharge its cargo in Helsingborg until Jan. 21.

Swedish distillate storage capacity at the country’s six main storage areas in Gothenburg, Lysekil, Gavle, Stockholm, Norrkoping and Malmo was 25 million bbl in 2012, according to an International Energy Agency report.