Marine fuel sales in the Spanish Port of Algeciras for the period between January and August of 2012 increased 16% year-on-year, the Gibraltar Chronicle reports, Ship & Bunker reports.
The growth was attributed for the most part to an increase in the number of container vessels calling at the port, with the amount of fuel delivered at berth rising 17% to 941,776 metric tonnes.
The Port Authority (APBA) said that container volume for the first 8 months rose 11.3% to 2.17 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU).
"If this trend continues, we could exceed the year-end 3.5 million TEUs, which is more than 25% over last year," said APBA president Manuel Morón.
Despite the rise in at-berth bunkering, deliveries to vessels at anchorage off the port were still said to account for over half of the port’s bunker business, rising 14% in the period to 1.2 million metric tonnes compared to the same period in 2011.
The news means that the Spanish port is closing the gap on rival bunker destination Gibraltar, its neighbour of only 3 nautical miles, whose port data shows its annual bunker sales have been slightly declining since 2009 and are currently around 4.27 million metric tonnes per year.
Earlier in the month Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel García-Margallo said the nation will begin regulating bunkering in waters of the British territory declared by the European Union as a nature protection site.
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