Crude Oil
Crude Oil added another day to the streak of increasing prices bringing the count to 6 now. Brent gained 11 cents to settle at $47.42 /bbl whilst WTI gained 19 cents to settle at $44.93 /bbl.
Crude prices continued their rise during Asian trading hours yesterday and rose to above $ 48.00 / bbl during the London trading session. However, these prices couldn’t be sustained during the New York trading session and prices gave up most of their gains to stay marginally higher. We could not discern any fundamental news to back either the rise or the subsequent fall in prices and would ascribe it to ongoing technical correction of prices without changing our outlook on the market.
Among other news, Libyan production is reported to be close to 1 million bpd as oil began to be pumped from storage tanks at Al Majid. The 5 kbd field is expected to be reopened fully on Saturday.
On the bullish side, demand for North Sea crudes has risen as Contracts for Differences have now flipped into backwardation.
Naphtha
Naphtha cracks continued to ease with ample supplies pressurizing physical trades to happen at discounts to the marker for the first time in a long time. The July crack is marginally lower at -$0.90 /bbl
Gasoline
Gasoline cracks also eased further following a reported increase in Singapore inventories. With the weak outlook on Gasoline and the passing of the local demand driver of Eid, cracks have eased to below below $ 10.0 /bbl. The July crack is valued at $ 9.90 /bbl
Distillates
A remarkable drawdown of close to 3 million barrels has been extremely supportive for gasoil. With no diesel shipments from China to Singapore, inventories fell to a 5 and a half month low of 9.993 million barrels.
No imports from Singapore is certainly an unusual state of affairs. The July crack is higher at $ 11.85 /bbl.
However, the regrade continues to perform abysmally. The July regrade is valued at -$ 0.60/bbl
Fuel Oil
Fuel oil stocks also drew by 6.5% to end up around 21 Million barrels. However, the market is still aware of supplies in floating storage nearby. Further, rising crude prices may also have clamped a lid on bullishness.
The July crack flipped blow the price of Dubai being valued at -$0.10 / bbl. The visco spread has also weakend to -$0.90 /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.