Asia’s middle distillates markets went back on a slight decline on Monday as bearish macroeconomic indicators weighed further, despite upbeat expectations for physical fundamentals in the fourth quarter.
Traders were awaiting more spot refiner offers for October to emerge, though maintenance could hamper the overall number of spot cargoes available from 1-2 regional refiners.
Taiwan’s CPC Corp was the first to start their sales for next month, offering at least 300,000 barrels of 10ppm cargoes for loading early October.
Refining margins went back to slightly below $13 a barrel, giving back some of previous session’s gains, with paper markets trending in line with crude losses.
Cash discounts were still pressured at discounts of more than 40 cents a barrel in the prompt loading period, with several lower-priced sellers and generally a lack of buying interest despite a narrower September-October contango spread.
Jet fuel spot activity was slightly muted as some refiners cleared their September sales last week and had yet to start October negotiations.
Cheaper cargoes in the open trading window pressured jet fuel cash markets, but firm bids capped overall weakness in the market.
Regrade went back to discounts of 35 cents a barrel, given the lack of firm support from the East-West arbitrage especially from the U.S. West Coast.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– No gasoil deal, one jet fuel deal
REFINERY NEWS REF/OUT
– A Thursday night fire at Lyondell Basell Industries’ LYB.N 263,776 barrel-per-day (bpd) Houston refinery may lead the company to permanently shut the plant ahead of its scheduled closure at the end of March 2025, people familiar with plant operations said on Friday.
NEWS
– Russia’s exports of ultra low-sulphur diesel (ULSD) from the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk in September are set to fall by 8.1% month on month to 1.04 million metric tons, down from 1.17 million tons scheduled for August, two traders said on Friday.
– OPEC+ is set to proceed with a planned oil output hike from October, as Libyan outages and pledged cuts by some members to compensate for overproduction counter the impact of sluggish demand, six sources from the producer group told Reuters.
– China’s manufacturing activity swung back to growth in August as new orders drove production, a private sector survey showed on Monday, offering a glimmer of hope amid a string of dismal economic data this summer.
– Oil exports at major Libyan ports were still halted on Monday and production curtailed across the country, though some output was being increased to feed local power generation, six engineers said.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)