Residual fuel oil stocks at key trading hub Singapore climbed this week after two weeks of declines amid an increase in net imports, official data showed on Thursday.

Onshore fuel oil stocks rose about 17.5%to 20.92 million barrels (3.29 million metric tons) in the week to July 26, data from Enterprise Singapore showed.

Weekly net imports, calculated by subtracting total exports from total imports, rose about 53% week-on-week to 864,000 metric tons.

The United Arab Emirates was the top origin of Singapore’s fuel oil imports, with net import volumes of 322,000 metric tons. Brazil followed at 196,000 metric tons and Malaysia at 144,000 metric tons.

Meanwhile, for the second week running South Korea was the top destination for fuel oil exports out of Singapore, with net export volumes of 79,000 metric tons.

Other top destinations for fuel oil net exports were Bangladesh at 45,000 metric tons and New Zealand at 21,000 metric tons.

Russian inflows continued to flood the Singapore trading hub, with 1.25 million mt assessed for July, while another 668,000 mt were headed directly to China, according to Refinitiv Oil Research in a weekly report.

Middle East outflows were notionally assessed at a five-month high of 2.13 million mt, up 16% on-month from June’s 1.83 million mt, led by the United Arab Emirates at 1.27 million mt, of which 1.20 million mt are high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) slated to arrive in the Greater Singapore trading hub, the report added.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Matthew Chye; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)