The Steepest Fall This Cycle: Mineral fuels and oils

The mirror does not flatter this cycle. Across all 27 EU reporters, mineral fuels and oils exports fell €339.5B year-over-year, a drop of -14.7% from 2024 to 2025. The imports side moved in lockstep and larger — €589.3B gone, -13.8%. When both sides of a corridor contract at that magnitude, it is not a rotation. It is the corridor itself narrowing.

Precious stones and metals told the opposite story on the import leg, rising €127.5B, +28.4%. Capital found somewhere to sit. That somewhere was not hydrocarbons.

The seasonal picture for HS27 exports into NL is instructive. Averaged over 2021–2025, the pattern peaks in Oct at index 1.138 and troughs in Dec at 0.874. A working spread of roughly a quarter across the calendar. Traders who ignore that shape are trading blind.

August, however, is the quiet month. The index reads 1.015 — essentially the baseline. Volume gives little directional steer here. The seasonal engine is neither pulling nor pushing. What you are watching in August is the underlying tide, not the wave.

Put the pieces together and the flows lean one way. A -13.8% collapse in HS27 imports against a +28.4% surge in HS71 imports is capital reallocation with weight behind it. The data points toward continued downward pressure on the energy corridor's throughput, and continued upward pressure on the precious-metals lane, at least until one of the two numbers stops moving.

I do not call prices from this bar. I read flows. And the flows this cycle are unambiguous about which door is closing.

This post is informational, derived from descriptive EU customs-clearing statistics (Eurostat COMEXT). It is not financial or investment advice and contains no price forecast. Trade flows describe what already moved; they do not predict prices.