ENERDEALERS OBSERVATORY – Hydrocarbon Consumption in Spain: 2019–2023

Enerdealers International Research Center "Rafael Gispert"

Understanding how Spain consumes hydrocarbons is essential for anticipating the evolution of its mobility system, industrial activity, energy security priorities, and the pace of its energy transition.

The period 2019– 2023 constitutes one of the most dynamic and disruptive phases in Spain’s recent energy history. It encompasses a pre-pandemic baseline, an unprecedented collapse in mobility and industrial activity during 2020, a rapid and uneven recovery across 2021– 2022, and finally the stabilization and moderate adjustments observed in 2023.

The Enerdealers Observatory has been created to provide a rigorous, data-driven and methodologically consistent platform for tracking these transformations. Its objective is not only to quantify fuel consumption but to interpret the structural and cyclical forces shaping it.

By integrating consumption figures with contextual economic, mobility and sectoral dynamics, the Observatory offers a comprehensive lens on the behaviour of Spain’s hydrocarbon system. This report synthesizes five years of consumption data across the main fuel categories —diesel, gasoline, kerosene, fuel oils, GLP and biofuels— providing detailed annual comparisons, share evolution, and year-on-year variations. The analysis reveals distinct patterns across product families:

• Diesel fuels, the backbone of Spain’s freight-intensive economy, demonstrate remarkable stability despite the pandemic shock and the early effects of electrification.

• Gasolines experience the sharpest mobility-induced contraction in 2020, followed by a multi-year recovery linked to tourism, commuting and private vehicle use.

• Kerosene emerges as the clearest proxy for the health of Spain’s aviation sector, showing both the deepest drop and the strongest rebound in the entire dataset.

• Fuel oils mirror the evolution of industrial output and maritime activity.

• GLP remains a stable and mature fuel with limited volatility.

• Biofuels constitute the only category with a continuous structural decline throughout the five-year period.

To contextualize consumption patterns, the Observatory also incorporates an examination of Spain’s service-station network, which exceeded 12,000 stations in 2023. The distribution of network shares across independent operators, integrated refiners (Repsol, Cepsa, BP), and other branded players adds another layer of insight into market structure, competitive positioning, and consumer access to fuels.

While independents dominate by number of stations, integrated refiners continue to concentrate a disproportionate share of throughput—a dynamic that is key to interpreting fuel mix profiles and retail volumes. Stable high-consumption coexists with energy transition: growing vehicle electrification, shifts in mobility habits, industrial efficiency measures, and changing regulatory frameworks.

The combination of quantitative data, comparative analysis, and structural interpretation allows the Observatory to distinguish between short-term fluctuations and long-term signals. The years examined reveal that Spain’s hydrocarbon consumption has not undergone a structural decline, but rather a sequence of shocks and rebounds culminating in a stable high-consumption plateau.

This equilibrium coexists with the early indicators of Spain’s energy transition: growing vehicle electrification, shifts in mobility habits, industrial efficiency measures, and changing regulatory frameworks.

Through this integrated approach, the Enerdealers Observatory aims to support industry actors, policymakers, investors and analysts in forming a clearer view of Spain’s evolving energy reality. By providing both the numbers and the narrative, it enables informed decision-making in a context where the interplay between hydrocarbons and decarbonisation paths will define the structure of mobility and energy supply for the coming decade.

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