oil-barrel

Crude Oil

Crude prices continued their see saw yesterday.  The Brent April Future (which becomes the front month today) rose by around 40 cents to settle at $ 55.58/bbl. WTI rose by  $ 0.18 to settle at $ 52.81 / bbl

In addition to taking a bullish view on compliance with cuts, prices were buoyed by a weak US Dollar with the EUR-USD pair trading close to 1.08.

However, data released by the API appears to be once again sounding warning bells. As per API, Crude stocks built by 5.8 Million Barrels, Gasoline by 2.9 Million barrels and Distillates by 2.3 Million barrels.

Naphtha

Naphtha was once again strong. Trades for first half of March were reported at premiums of $ 9.50 to $ 10.00 per ton to MOPJ.   Supplies are tight and likely to stay that way for a while till such time as more stocks do not show up or weather warms up releasing LPG from heating requirements.  The Ruwais refinery may still not have resumed operations completely.

The February MOPJ crack is valued at around $ 3.23 / bbl and March at $ 2.30 / bbl  up around $1/bbl from Friday.  The Singapore crack for February should be valued at $ 2.00 /bbl for February.

Going forward we will be slowly replacing our coverage of the Naphtha Singapore crack with the Japan crack as the latter is far more liquid and gives a better indication of market movements.

Gasoline 

The gasoline market also showed signs of strength The February crack is up by around 65 cents $ 13.40 cents /bbl.

Vitol, who has been a seller of gasoline all through the month of February, emerged a strong buyer of gasoline paper for February.

Middle Distillates

The gasoil crack for February is unchanged around  $11.75 – $11.80 /bbl. The Regrade has improved to near flat.

Fuel Oil

The Fuel Oil crack, which had been enjoying a brilliant run for 3-4 months seems to have lost its strength completely. February is valued at – $ 4.50 /bbl and March at -$ 4.80/bbl.

About this blog

This blog post attempts to give a top level summary of the Singapore market goings on to a person who seeks to obtain a directional sense of the market on a daily basis.

Disclaimer : All the views are the author’s personal views. These do not constitute an advice to buy or sell any commodity

 

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