Oil prices climbed more than 3% on Tuesday after the head of the U.S. central bank eased market concerns over interest rate hikes, while recovering demand in China also boosted prices.
London-traded Brent crude for March delivery rose $2.70, or 3.3%, to finish Tuesday’s regular session at $83.69, extending Monday’s 1.3% gain.
New York-traded WTI crude for March delivery settled up $3.03, or 4.1%, at $77.14 per barrel.
The outage of an oil export terminal after the earthquake in Turkey also gave those long on crude the chance to push prices up sharply for a second day in a row on Tuesday, in a bid to close the gap on last week’s torrid selloff.
Operations at Turkey’s 1 million barrel-per-day oil export terminal in Ceyhan were halted after a major earthquake hit the region, Reuters reported, adding that the facility, which exports Azeri crude oil to international markets, will be closed Feb. 6-8.
Iraqi crude oil loadings from storage in Ceyhan were ready for resumption on Tuesday, but bad weather was preventing vessels from berthing, a trade source said. Iraq’s crude oil pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port was still halted, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s energy ministry said.
Adding to oil’s upside was a bold attempt by Saudi Arabia to raise for the first time in six months prices for its Asian-bound crude, also on bets over Chinese demand. The kingdom had previously ratcheted down the so-called OSP, or Official Selling Price, for its Arab Light crude to be competitive against Russia’s Urals crude, which had seen heavy discounting over the past year from Ukraine-war sanctions imposed by the West.
Supply concerns continued to affect markets as operations at Turkey’s oil terminal in Ceyhan halted after a major earthquake hit the region. The BTC terminal, which exports Azeri crude oil to international markets, will be closed on Feb. 6-8 while operators assess earthquake damage, a Turkish shipping agent said.
API Data
The supportive build in crude was offset by serious builds in both gasoline and gasoil. Also mitigating the impact of the crude draw was that fact that stocks built at Cushing notwithstanding the overall draw. As usual, we await official data today.
Product Data likely to be unavailable till Friday
The March crack is lower at -$3.80 per barrel
Product Data likely to be unavailable till Friday.
The March crack is higher at $15.70 per barrel.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Gasoline stocks by region.
Product Data likely to be unavailable till Friday.
The March crack for 10 ppm Gasoil is higher at $25.90 /bbl. The 10 ppm regrade is at -$0.10 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Distillate stocks by region.
Product Data likely to be unavailable till Friday
The March crack for 180 cst FO is higher at – $18.80 /bbl with the visco spread at $2.20 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Fuel Oil stocks by region.
No fresh trades for today. However, we may hedge more gasoline should gasoline Q2 crack rise above $14.00 / bbl
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.