Tank Storage Association Column: The European Tank Storage Sector in Focus

The bulk storage and energy infrastructure sector plays a vital role in providing services that are critical to UK, European and global consumers. The sector supports an essential interface between sea, road, rail and pipeline logistics for a diverse range of products that are essential to our daily lives, including transport and heating fuels, chemicals, animal feed and foodstuffs. Terminals also provide greater resilience within the supply chain by ensuring flexibility to meet demand, particularly in periods where domestic supplies of stored products cannot be guaranteed. Around 22 of the terminals operated by Tank Storage Association members in the UK are designated by the government as critical national infrastructure due to their importance in providing energy to industrial, transport and defence markets. Storage capacity also includes strategic reserves held for emergencies and supply disruptions. Most recently, the energy trilemma of security, affordability and sustainability has come into sharper focus owing to most recent shifts across energy markets - driven largely as a consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine - and in the wider geopolitical...