(Reuters) – Fuel importers in California have received gasoline from Saudi Arabia’s Jubail Industrial Port after maintenance at the world’s largest refinery in India helped to open the rare arbitrage opportunity, data from oil analytics firm Kpler showed.
Three gasoline shipments totaling about 886,000 barrels from Saudi’s Jubail Industrial Port have discharged in recent months at Southern California’s Olympus Terminals, according to Kpler.
Prior to this, California had not received fuel imports from Saudi Arabia since 2022. So far in 2025, the terminal has imported about 40% of its gasoline shipments from Jamnagar, which underwent a maintenance-related shutdown in April. That pushed buyers to turn to Saudi Arabia as an alternative supplier, Kpler analyst Yui Torikata said. California’s fuel imports rose to their highest in four years in May, as the second-largest U.S. oil-consuming state tapped other unusual routes to make up for domestic refinery outages.
California’s regulators have proposed investments to raise fuel import capacity, as the state prepares for the closure of refineries that supply about 17% of its fuel needs. “There (are) certainly concerns over upcoming closures of two refineries… recent favorable freight cost also encouraged the high imports volume,” Torikata said, referring to planned shutdowns of Valero Energy’s 170,000-barrel per day Benicia refinery and Phillips 66’s 139,000 bpd Los Angeles refinery.
Reporting by Seher Dareen in London and Shariq Khan in New York; editing by Barbara Lewis
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