Asia’s middle distillates markets recorded a slight uptick in physical window activity on Friday, with cash discussions remaining at seven-month highs, though overall paper discussions stayed slightly muted.

Regional supply disruptions continued to be a primraryfocus in the market, with more buying activities from Indonesia’s Pertamina evident.

Traders were fervently awaiting for more spot November sales to emerge, as the backwardated market structure in the past two weeks could still encourage refiners to end up selling more than October.

So far for this week, only one of South Korea’s oil major, GS Caltex, has started November sales, Reuters records showed.

Meanwhile, at least two long-range-sized vessels, Captain John and Hafnia Loire, will load diesel from swing supplier Middle East to southeast Asia in October – in line with earlier expectations of more flows to the east of Suez markets given better seller profitability compared with the west.

Refining margins were little changed from the previous session, also week on week, at around $14 a barrel.

Spot cash premiums hovered at seven-month highs in the past four trading sessions on aggressive buying interest in the window trading sessions. The value closed at 46 cents a barrel on Friday, reflecting the continuous demand strength.

A general lack of selling activity buoyed cash markets further.

Jet fuel activity was much more muted in comparison, but some analysts are hoping that decreases in supply from refinery outages – planned and unplanned – will be supportive to prices.

There are some trader expectations of stronger demand in the fourth quarter, especially ahead of the holiday travelling season in the West, which could still be a boon for the market,

Regrade closed the week slightly higher at a discount of 12 cents a barrel.

SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– One gasoil deal, no jet fuel deals

INVENTORIES
– Independently held refined oil products stocks in storage in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub fell by around 1% in the week to Thursday, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed. ARA/

REFINERY NEWS
– Two people were killed in a chemical release at Pemex’s 312,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) Deer Park oil refinery in Texas, the county sheriff said.

NEWS
– Weak refining margins due to a slowdown in global demand for fuel and lower oil trading results will dent BP’s BP.L third-quarter profit by up to $600 million, the British oil major said on Friday.
– The Omsk oil refinery, Russia’s largest by production volumes, increased crude processing by 4% year-on-year in the January to September period thanks to a modernisation of its facilities, energy giant Gazprom said.

– Oil prices softened on Friday but were set for a second weekly gain as investors weighed the impact of hurricane damage on U.S. demand against any broad supply disruption if Israel attacks Iranian oil sites.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Tasim Zahid)