Crude Oil
Oil prices halted their rally on Monday after Russia’s finance minister said Russia and OPEC may decide to boost production to fight for market share with the United States. Brent crude futures ended the session at $71.18 a barrel, down 37 cents. WTI futures fell 49 cents to settle at $ 63. a barrel.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said over the weekend that Russia and OPEC may decide to boost production to fight for market share with the United States, but this would push oil as low as $40 per barrel. While the minister said he did not know whether OPEC countries would be happy with this scenario, the group’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, is considered keen to keep cutting, but sources within OPEC said it could raise output from July if disruptions continue elsewhere.
Eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar tried to stage a coup by issuing an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, U.N. envoy Ghassan Salame said on Monday with Libya’s top rivals locked in military confrontation over the capital Tripoli.
Kuwait, OPEC’s fourth largest oil producer in March, will start producing heavy oil in August at a rate of 11,000 b/d, with plans to ramp this up to 60,000 b/d by January next year. State-run Kuwait Oil Company is producing heavy oil for the first time in its history, and is ultimately seeking to produce 430,000 b/d of heavy oil
Hedge fund managers continue to accumulate positions in crude and gasoline in the most sustained bull market since 2017 but the market is starting to look stretched and the balance of risks is shifting to the downside. Bullish long positions now outnumber bearish short ones by a ratio approaching 7:1, up from less than 2:1 at the start of January
Naphtha
Asia’s naphtha crack eased from a near two-week high to a four-session low of $48.53 a tonne.
Most buyers have completed purchases for naphtha scheduled for second-half May delivery. Taiwan’s Formosa Petrochemical was among the last few to have scooped up the fuel for second-half May delivery. Asia’s top naphtha importer bought some 120 KT of open-specification naphtha for second-half May arrival at Mailiao at premiums of about $3.50 to $4.00 a tonne to its own price formula on a cost-and-freight (C&F) basis.
The May crack is lower at – $ 5.75 /bbl
Gasoline
Asia’s gasoline margin fell from a near eight-month high to a three-session low of $8.47 a barrel on Monday.
The fall came as the market calmed after a reaction last week caused by an explosion and fire last Friday at a project in Malaysia, owned by Petronas. The incident took place at an atmospheric residue desulphurisation unit (ARDS) which was in its commissioning stage, Petronas said.
The May crack is lower at $ 8.05 / bbl
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Gasoline stocks by region.
Distillates
Asia’s cash discounts for 10 ppm gasoil narrowed on Monday, helped by a slight uptick in buying interests for physical cargoes in Singapore.
Cash discounts for gasoil with 10ppm sulphur content were at 18 cents a barrel to Singapore quotes, compared with a discount of 32 cents a barrel on Friday.
Traders, however, were worried that the market for the industrial fuel might weaken over the next couple of months as regional refineries return from spring turnarounds and more export barrels from China come to the market.
The April/May time spread for the benchmark gasoil grade in Singapore remained in contango to be at a discount of 20 cents per barrel on Monday.
Cash discounts for Jet fuel were at 19 cents a barrel to Singapore quotes, compared with a discount of 20 cents a barrel on Friday.
The May crack for 500 ppm Gasoil is lower at $ 13.35 /bbl with the 10 ppm crack at 14.05 / bbl. The regrade is at – $ 0.25 /bbl
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Distillate stocks by region.
Fuel Oil
Asia’s 380-cst high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) cash discount narrowed to a one-week top on Monday, boosted by a slight improvement in buying interest for physical cargoes of the fuel in the Singapore trading window.
Cash differentials for 380-cst HSFO contracted for the second straight session to minus $2.48 per tonne to Singapore quotes, compared with minus $2.84 a tonne on Friday and a near three-year low of minus $2.97 a tonne on Thursday.
Meanwhile, sales of marine fuels in Singapore, Asia’s biggest ship fuelling port, climbed to a two-month high of 4.091 million tonnes in March, up 4.4 percent from February, but down 2 percent from a year earlier, data from the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) showed on Monday.
The May 180 cst crack is lower at – $ 2.55 / bbl with the visco spread at $ 1.30 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Fuel Oil stocks by region.
Hedge Recommendations
Nothing fresh to report today.
Hedge recommendations are essentially made for refiners. These are not trading positions as such. The rationale of these positions is to lock in extraordinary levels for the refiner.
Click Here to see how all our recommendations have fared
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.