Summer and tourism in Europe: will there be planes?

The European Commissioner for Energy, the Danish Dan Jorgensen, already made statements this Thursday that suggest that the crisis It is more serious than expected if the Strait of Hormuz is not already opened to the passage of ships, something that does not appear on the radars of either Washington or Tehran right now.

The reassuring speech was falling apart only because announcements from airline companies that hundreds or thousands of flights were suspended and because the prices of plane tickets in Europe are sufferingthe quick rise by more than doubling what airlines pay for a fuel with increasingly less availability.

If before the American and Israeli attack on Iran the metric ton of kerosene was paid for about 700 dollars, This week it was already around $1,500.. That expense It is a third of airlines’ total spending.

Jorgensen is the first senior European official to speak clearly on the matter. He assures in statements to the newspaper ‘Politico’ that the situation will not improve in the coming weeks or monthsalthough the passage is opening in the Strait of Hormuz, but it could worsen considerably.

“We already see companies canceling flights and routes, and we see rising prices. The situation It will be at least as bad as now.but there is also a real risk that it will get worse,” said Jorgenson. In the European media, talk is already beginning to be made of “the kerosene war” between airlines. Companies would be bidding to obtain reserves.

The data say that before the war Europe received about 175,000 barrels of kerosene per day from the Middle East, which was supplemented with between 30,000 and 60,000 from the United States.

Right now it would have lost, according to estimates by the European Commissionup to 53% of that supply because part of what was lost from the Middle East is being compensated with more imports from the United States. And not all countries are in the same situation.

Spain is a net exporter of kerosene because it has greater refining capacity, despite being one of the countries with the most flights. The United Kingdom It is one of those that most depends on imports of already refined kerosene.

The European authorities could release more fuel from strategic reservesbut they have two problems doing so. The first is to justify spending strategic fuel reserves to feed holiday flights. And the second is the refining capacity of European plants, because Europe does not usually refine jet fuel, He buys it already refined.

The European Commission It’s not at the panic level yet. of the International Energy Agency, which half a month ago said that airlines They had six weeks of fuel left If it maintained its current consumption, what would it take to last until the end of May and would cause a disruption never seen before in the European tourist seasonkey for the economy of the bloc and especially for the Mediterranean countries.

The European Commission issued two weeks ago voluntary recommendations, that ranged from increasing the teleworking load so that the population use less transport weekdays until privileging other long-distance modes of transportation other than the plane.

The pattern of the low-cost giant Ryanair, the irish Michael O’Leary (a character who does not usually bite his tongue) said this week that the problems with fuel for airplanes will be “significant” in early June.

And the airline announcements keep happening. The largest was that of the German Lufthansa, which in mid-April reported the cancellation of 20,000 flights in the coming months.