Oil Price Digest 13-Jun-17

Crude Oil

Oil prices continued to inch upwards yesterday. Brent closed 14 cents up at $48.29 /bbl while WTI rose by 25 cents to close at $46.08 /bbl.

Crude prices rose fairly sharply at the London open on news from France that they propose to reduce their dependence on nuclear supply substantially.  Nevertheless, this news could not take prices much past $ 49.00 / bbl. During New York trading hours, prices gradually retraced to their closing levels.

We expect crude will not move lower for today given that API data is expected after close of New York trading.

In other news Chinese major Sinopec is expected to cut throughput by 3 million tonnes in the third quarter of 2017. Also, speculators cut length in Brent futures by a record 42,357 contracts last week.  This is the 2nd highest level of decline since 2011.

South Korean firm SK energy continued to shop for cargoes in the market yesterday for H2 July cargoes. Indian firm BPCL was seen offering a 55 KT parcel lifting early July ex Kochi. This was picked up by Gunvor.

Indonesia’s Chandra Asri Petrochemicals had to lower its run rates for its naphtha cracker following a fire in its furnace unit. It is however expected to return to 90% operations within a week and normal operations within a month.

The June Japan Naphtha- Dubai crack is lower at -$1.00 /bbl and the July crack is at -$1.10 /bbl

Gasoline

Gasoline cracks are lower today amid apprehensions of weak demand and high inventories.

June crack is at $11.10 /bbl while the July crack is at $ 10.1o /bbl

Distillates

The ATF market in Singapore is generating a fair bit of interest with traders looking to take advantage of the current arbitrage opportunity for shipping cargoes from Singapore to the United Kingdom. Demand for gasoil continues to be robust with India’s HPCL now in the market looking for June 40 ppm cargo.

The June crack is up at $ 10.60 /bbl while the June regrade has softened further to -$0.25 /bbl. The July crack is at $ 10.10 /bbl with the July regrade  almost flat at $ 0.03/bbl

Fuel Oil

Fuel Oil cracks continued to ease with fuel oil imports set to climb this month. The total fuel oil flows from west to Asia could reach the highest in four months in June at nearly 5 million tonnes.

The June 180 cst crack has softened to -$ 0.60 / bbl/ The visco spread is unchanged at $ 1.35 / bbl. The July crack is at -$1.30 /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