2026 Preview: NY Harbor Market Watching Refined Product Stocks, Growing Renewable Diesel Use
Northeast spot refined product market participants will enter the new year with a close watch on gasoline supplies, exports from Nigeria’s Dangote refinery and the rising use of renewable diesel in the region.
Gasoline inventories were a particular focus in late 2025, with sources reporting rack terminals in Providence, R.I., Braintree, Mass, and New Haven, Conn., were worryingly low in late November. Spot market brokers and traders will start 2026 watching to see whether stocks remain tight or recover in time to avoid causing a larger impact on the market.
It’s possible the selling and closing of terminals in recent years in the Northeast have led to the shortages, with OPIS reporting that terminals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, N.Y., were repurposed as Kinder Morgan sold its petroleum terminal complex to real estate developers and Buckeye sold its Brooklyn facility.
The terminal landscape in the region has changed with the sale of Global GP’s Revere, Mass., terminal and the closing of ExxonMobil’s Everett, Mass. terminal in 2022.
Energy Information Administration data for mid-November showed gasoline stock in the East Coast (PADD 1) market fell to a 2025 low of just 48.836 million bbl. That was the lowest inventory level since mid-November 2022, when holdings were at 47.069 million bbl.
During that same week, however, PADD 1 refinery utilization rates rose to 93.7% from 91.5% in the previous week, putting them well above the year-ago rate of 81.1%, the EIA data showed.
It’s worth noting that at the time the EIA in its November Short-Term Energy Outlook predicted PADD 1 gasoline inventory would increase by the end of the fourth quarter to 57.7 million bbl and forecast that stocks would continue to rise into the new year to 58.9 million bbl by the end of the first quarter.
EIA also forecast that stocks wouldn’t fall below 57.3 million bbl for all of 2026.
Imports will remain vital to meet demand in the region. And a key question is whether the Dangote refinery will emerge as a reliable supplier.
Participants in the New York Harbor market throughout 2025 kept a close eye on the progress of the 650,000 b/d refinery watching to see whether company promises of imminent exports of U.S specification ULSD and gasoline would be realized.
Although the refinery has been running for more than a year, operators are continuing to work to ramp up production after a series of delays in 2025 from unplanned maintenance work and other operational issues.
Dangote Industries, the owner and operator of the refinery, said in October that it planned to expand the capacity of the refinery to 1.4 million b/d, but provided no further details on when that might happen, according to an EIA analysis. Over the first nine months of 2025, EIA estimated Nigeria’s total exports of finished gasoline into PADD 1 totaled 97,000 bbl, with all of that arriving in August. No Nigerian fuel entered PADD 1 in 2024.
Should Dangote be able to ramp up production and exports of U.S. specification gasoline in the coming years, it could force some European refineries to close, according to Denton Cinequegrana, OPIS’s chief oil analyst.
The Dangote refinery, however, made a more significant impact on PADD 1 jet fuel and distillate inventories in 2025.
In February and May, PADD 1 distillate fuel imports from Nigeria rose to more than 450,000 bbl from none in 2024. The country also exported 1.684 million bbl of jet fuel to the East Coast from March to May 2025, according to EIA data. That was a huge increase from the 282,000 bbl of Nigeria sent to PADD 1 in all of 2024. At the same time, demand for renewable diesel on the East Coast continued to rise.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority said in 2025 that it had spent nearly $8 million to support the development of low-carbon fuels, including renewable diesel.
In addition, the Pittsburgh Regional Transit agency in October unveiled plans to run a trial to compare the performance of 10 buses fueled by renewable diesel against 10 powered by traditional diesel to evaluate future use of a renewable diesel-biofuel blend. The organization is aiming to have a zero-carbon-emissions fleet by 2045, according to Ryan Warsing, the group’s director of sustainability.
Further, New York’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services in November said the busiest municipal ferry system in the country had transitioned to renewable diesel. The department plans to convert all city trucks and vessels to renewable diesel by July 2026, Deputy Commissioner Keither Kerman said. “We’ve set a goal of having complete renewable diesel by the end of next year in all the vessel programs, and so far, so good,” he said.
Still, it’s hard to see a more meaningful increase in the region’s use of alternative fuels absent state and local incentives like those offered through Low Carbon Fuel Standard programs in place along the West Coast.
No significant updates were announced in 2025 for the upcoming cap-and-invest program in New York. The program, launched in 2022, aims to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030.
In October, New York Supreme Court ruled the state’s Department of Conservation “must issue its greenhouse cap-and-invest rules” by Feb. 6. In the wake of that decision, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul filed an appeal, arguing that fulfilling that order “might be infeasible.”
Reporting by Deanna Mendoza, dmendoza@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeffrey Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com