Crude Oil
Oil was back in rally mode on Thursday, after an early week stumble, as President Joe Biden signed his Covid-19 relief bill into law, sending prices of stocks and commodities ripping on the promise of vaccinations and economic reopening.
Brent futures settled at $69.63, up $1.73, or 2.5%. Brent hit an intraday high of $69.66 and was headed for a 0.4% gain on the week.
WTI crude settled at $66.02, up $1.58, or 2.5%, after hitting a high of $66.08. That advance added to Wednesday’s 0.7% rebound in WTI and virtually erased the losses from Monday and Tuesday, positioning it for a flat finish on the week, pending Friday’s outcome.
The rebound in oil over the past two days came despite government data indicating U.S. crude output was recovering faster than refining after last month’s storm-related outages in Texas.
OPEC said on Thursday that a recovery in oil demand will be focused in 2H’21, with expectations that demand would rise by 5.89 MB/D YoY in 2021, upping its forecasts slightly from the previous month.
Argus Media said some traders looked at switching to the Argus dated Brent when competitor Platts, which sets the benchmark used by the industry, faced backlash after announcing reforms.
India’s fuel consumption fell for the 2nd month in a row in Feb’21 to 17.2 MMT (-4.9% YoY, -4.6% MoM) to its lowest since Sep’20 as record-high retail prices continued to stonewall a demand recovery, PPAC data showed.
covid 19
At a global level, the death toll from the COVID-19 virus rose to 2,641,000 (+9,626 DoD) yesterday. The total number of active cases fell by around 10,000 DoD to 21.75 million. (Click here for details)
Naphtha
No fresh information on the naphtha markets.
The April crack is lower at $0.80 /bbl
Gasoline
No fresh information on the gasoline markets.
The April crack is lower at $7.90 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Gasoline stocks by region.
Distillates
Asia’s cash differentials for 10 ppm gasoil were unchanged at a discount of 21 cents to Singapore quotes on Thursday.
Hurt by a weaker deal in the physical trade window, cash discounts for jet fuel widened to 70 cents per barrel to Singapore quotes, a level not seen since Oct. 22. They were at 55 cents per barrel a day earlier.
Singapore’s middle distillate inventories dipped 1.1% to a five-week low of 14.4 million barrels in the week ended March 10, according to Enterprise Singapore data. This week’s stocks were 25.2% higher than a year earlier.
The April crack for 500 ppm Gasoil is lower at $5.35 /bbl with the 10 ppm crack at $ 6.15 / bbl. The regrade is at -$ 1.55 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Global Distillate stocks by region.
Fuel Oil
Asia’s Hi-Lo climbed away from a more than one-month low in the previous session. The HiLo spread, for April was at $114 a tonne, up from $111.50 a tonne in the previous session, Refinitiv data in Eikon showed.
Singapore fuel oil stocks rose by 898,000 million barrels, or about 141,000 tonnes, to 22.798 million barrels, or 3.59 million tonnes, Enterprise Singapore data showed. They, however, were down 9% from a year earlier
The April crack for 180 cst FO is lower at -$3.95 /bbl with the visco spread at $0.90 /bbl.
Click Here for a graphical depiction of Fuel Oil stocks by region.
Hedge Recommendations
No fresh action 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.