Residual fuel oil inventories at key trading hub Singapore rebounded to nearly three-month highs as net imports recovered after a sharp decline last week, official data showed on Thursday.

Onshore fuel oil stocks rose 14.4% to 21.57 million barrels (3.40 million metric tons) in the week to Dec. 13, according to latest data from Enterprise Singapore.

The increase came after net fuel oil imports recovered after shrinking last week.

Net fuel oil imports, calculated by subtracting total exports from total imports, have more than quadrupled week-on-week to 686,000 tons.

The top three origin countries for imports were Malaysia, Brazil and Indonesia. Meanwhile, most cargoes heading out of Singapore were bound for China, the Philippines and New Caledonia.

Asia’s fuel oil arrivals for December are pegged between 5.5 and 6.0 million tons, up about 8% from November, said LSEG Oil Research this week. This was led by a surge in Western arbitrage cargoes, which are expected to breach 4 million tons.

The higher flows of Western cargoes to Asia came amid higher fuel oil prices in the East during November.

The prompt-month fuel oil east-west price spread hit a year’s high of $76.25 a ton in mid-November, based on LSEG data.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Jeslyn Lerh; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)