Crude Oil
Oil prices settled up more than 2% on Monday, extending last week’s gains as the latest report of encouraging coronavirus vaccine trials had market anticipating a recovery in demand.
Brents future rose 76 cents to settle at $44.20 a barrel. WTI January crude futures rose 52 cents to $42.42 per barrel.
The contango structure in the market narrowed to as little as 31 U.S. cents, its smallest since mid June.
Iraq, OPEC’s second largest oil producer, has nearly reached its limit in accepting the OPEC model of “one size fits all” in terms of output cuts without taking into account members’ economic and political conditions, the country’s deputy PM said Monday.
India’s Oct’20 crude oil imports fell 21.6% YoY to 15.14 MMT (~3.58 MB/D) as rising cases curbed mobility and consumption, while exports of refined products fell 35.7% YoY in Oct’20 to 3.84 MMT, PPAC data showed.
covid 19
At a global level, the death toll from the COVID-19 virus rose to 1,401,569 (+7,623 DoD) yesterday. The total number of active cases rose by around 130,000 DoD to 16.95 million. (Click here for details).
Naphtha
Asia’s naphtha crack was at a three-session high of $54.45 a tonne on Monday but this remained 15% lower versus a month ago as the supply glut persisted.
Total naphtha supplies to Asia for November are seen at a six-month high of up to 6.4 million tonnes, sharply higher versus October’s volumes at up to 4.7 million tonnes following high amount of East-bound cargoes arriving this month.
The December crack is lower at – $0.70 /bbl.
Gasoline
Asia’s gasoline crack hit a 3-1/2-month low of $1.06 a barrel due to abundant supplies. China has also issued a new and final batch of refined fuel export quotas for 2020 totalling 3 million tonnes. The new issue brings the total fuel export quota this year to nearly 59 million tonnes, up from last year’s 56 million tonnes.
Gasoline inventories at ARA rose nearly 7.4% to reach a six-week high of almost 1.33 million tonnes in the week to Thursday.
The December crack is higher at $1.65 /bbl
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Gasoline stocks by region.
Distillates
Asia’s benchmark 10ppm diesel crack fell to a four-session low of $4.63 a barrel on Monday, dragged down by firmer raw material oil prices.
China’s exports of middle distillates were high as demand from the early October holiday failed to absorb the products following record high refinery throughput last month. Jet kerosene exports also increased, to 440 KT from 260 KT the previous month.
The December crack for 500 ppm Gasoil is higher at $4.35 /bbl with the 10 ppm crack at $ 5.15 / bbl. The regrade is at -$ 1.25 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Distillate stocks by region.
Fuel Oil
Cash premiums for cargoes of 180-cst HSFO fell on Monday, dragged lower by a slowdown in demand and weaker supplier offers.
180-cst cash premiums fell to $3.50 a tonne to Singapore, down from $5.68 on Friday and its lowest in a week.
The December crack for 180 cst FO is lower at -$0.35 /bbl with the visco spread at $0.75 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Fuel Oil stocks by region.
Hedge Recommendations
No fresh activity 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 refinery.
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.