The experts at Energex look at the investor trends shaping storage sector acquisitions and refinancing in 2026
As politics and economics realign, so too do the priorities of investors in tank storage and pipelines. For owners and operators, understanding how lenders and equity providers now assess risk and value has become central to both acquisitions and refinancing. While familiar fundamentals such as market outlook, supply dynamics, customer integration and energy transition potential remain decisive, the weight investors attach to each is changing. Energy security and supply chain resilience, once background considerations, have moved to the foreground. In the process, hydrocarbons, long assumed to be on the wrong side of history, have regained strategic relevance, at least over the medium term. Capital allocation across the storage and handling sector is increasingly shaped by this reassessment.
Energex has advised on numerous commercial due diligence exercises for refinancings and transactions across Europe’s storage sector. That experience, combined with ongoing dialogue with major infrastructure investors, offers a clear view of the forces now shaping investment decisions.
Markets Still Matter
No investment in storage can escape the arithmetic of utilisation. Without sufficient throughput, even the most strategically located terminal struggles to justify its valuation. In M&A and refinancings alike, investors focus on whether product imbalances at coastal terminals, or inland demand profiles can sustain stable occupancy and predictable revenues. For much of the past decade, the dominant narrative was one of fossil fuel decline. Electric vehicles, net zero commitments and tightening regulation were expected to erode demand, pushing capital towards lower carbon alternatives. Yet reality has proved more stubborn. Utilisation across traditional oil products terminals has remained robust. Fuel oil, once earmarked for decline, has seen strong demand, despite the loss of Russian exports, supporting both capacity take-up and storage rates in hubs such as ARA. Elevated refining margins have reinforced similar trends across other products.
As concerns over affordability and security of supply begin to rival environmental ambitions, investor aversion to hydrocarbons has softened. Many are now willing to tolerate exposure, provided assets are backed by credible growth and transition narratives.
Security of Supply Makes a Comeback
This shift has been driven as much by geopolitics as by markets. Persistent tensions have strengthened the case for strategic stockholding and more resilient supply chains. The result is a firmer underpinning for long term storage and pipeline utilisation and, in some cases, the need to expand infrastructure to serve new logistical and security priorities.
The Value of Being Embedded
Market demand sets the ceiling for utilisation, but integration determines risk. Investors continue to prize terminals anchored by long term, creditworthy customers. Such relationships lend credibility to business plans, stabilise cash flows and reduce renewal risk. Where operators are embedded in a customer’s wider system, serving refineries, distribution networks or industrial plants, contracts are more likely to endure.
Yet contract structures themselves are evolving. Uncertainty around energy transition and market outlooks has led to shortened contract length, forcing investors to accept greater exposure to renewal risk. This, in turn, sharpens scrutiny of customer strength and competitive positioning. Integration can also unlock capital expenditure. Many customers face their own transition pressures and require new forms of storage for alternative products. In such cases, investment costs may be underwritten through long term offtake agreements, aligning incentives between operator and user.
Beyond customers, location matters. Assets that sit at the heart of local supply envelopes, serving demand centres with multiple transport links, are increasingly favoured. Terminals capable of handling both import and refinery flows, and of distributing efficiently into surrounding markets, are seen as strategically indispensable.
A More Sober View of the Transition
The investment narrative around energy transition has become more pragmatic. Between 2020 and 2024, policy momentum pushed many funds towards green energy and transition projects, reshaping capital flows in the storage sector. Over the past year, however, investors have followed governments and energy majors in re-examining the economics. Flagship projects have been postponed or shelved amid rising costs, policy uncertainty and renewed emphasis on shareholder returns. Energy transition has not disappeared from investment criteria, but it is now filtered through a harsher test relating to affordability and certainty of returns. Without clearer policy frameworks, many investors struggle to underwrite the long term economics required for large scale commitments.
Risk Repriced
Underlying all these trends is a shift in investor risk appetite. Traditional infrastructure funds were once defined by ‘core’ mandates; low risk, contracted revenues and modest but reliable returns. Today, swelling capital pools and a shortage of fully derisked investment opportunities have pushed many along the risk spectrum towards ‘core plus’ and ‘value add’ strategies. Storage assets with shorter term or rolling contracts now sit more comfortably within this expanded remit.
Energy markets themselves demand such flexibility. Volatile fundamentals, geopolitical uncertainty and the uneven progress of transition projects all require investors to tolerate greater risk. New energy investments bring added uncertainty around future demand, policy support and capital intensity. To manage this, investors increasingly seek strategic partners. Offtake agreements and operational partnerships can reduce risk while improving bankability. This arrangement suits both sides: funds deploy capital with greater confidence, while operators gain access to competitive balance sheets to fund development and transition, whilst retaining the valuable trading flows.
A New Balance
Energex’s bulk liquids storage infrastructure expert, Boris Oudenbroek, who was on the boards of LBC and Exolum, says: ‘In a world of fractured geopolitics and uneven decarbonisation, pragmatism has returned to infrastructure investing. For storage assets, that may prove an advantage.’
The essentials of storage investing have not changed. Market outlook, customer integration and transition potential remain central. What has shifted is the balance between them. Supply security now commands greater attention; energy transition narratives are treated with more scepticism; and hydrocarbons are no longer taboo. Investors are more willing to accept risk or share it with strategic partners provided the underlying strategy is robust.
Energex brings a uniquely practitioner-led perspective to storage and infrastructure investments, combining deep market insight with hands on commercial expertise. The company have advised on major terminal acquisitions, refinancing processes and long-term strategy development across Europe’s bulk liquids storage landscape. In these assignments we have delivered robust product outlooks to 2050, asset-level competitiveness assessments and energy-transition repositioning strategies.
For more information please contact:
Jason Rajah (partner, oil & renewable fuels): jrajah@energex.partners
Steve Jones (partner, M&A and investor services): sjones@energex.partners
Boris Oudenbroek (oil infrastructure lead): boudenbroek@energex.partners
Gabriella Tarrant (senior associate): gtarrant@energex.partners