Asia’s diesel market backwardation deepened further to $2 a barrel on Friday, as front-month fundamentals remained supported, though margins fell week on week.
Regional diesel demand continued to stay upbeat, with at least two importers including Indonesia’s Pertamina seeking prompt October deliveries.
The refiner had only bought one cargo for October delivery via its earlier tender yesterday, several trade sources said, and definitely needs more.
Taiwan Area ,China’s CPC Corp also sought for first-half November delivery gasoil for the first time in a long while.
For jet fuel, some November cargoes were available in the spot market with private negotiations underway or done, though discussions stayed in the discounted territory – similar to September.
Refining margins slipped to around $20.7 a barrel, down by more than $1 from last week.
Cash differentials continued the incline to $1.65 a barrel, as firm buying interest on window propped up markets.
Regrade narrowed to 60-70 cents per barrel, its narrowest since around May, some trade sources say.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– One gasoil deal, no jet fuel deal
INVENTORIES
– Gasoline stocks independently held in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose by about 2% on the week, data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed on Thursday.
REFINERY NEWS
– An explosion set off a fire on Thursday night in a jet fuel production unit at Chevron’s 285,000 barrel-per-day Los Angeles-area refinery, said people familiar with the matter.
NEWS
– The Colonial Pipeline, the largest U.S. fuel conduit, is facing an outage on all of its main delivery lines, three market sources told Reuters on Thursday.
– OPEC’s oil output rose further in September after an OPEC+ agreement to raise production, a Reuters survey found on Thursday, mainly due to higher production by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
– Russia’s seaborne diesel and gasoil exports dropped 20% in September from August to about 2.4 million metric tons, as unplanned refinery outages triggered by Ukrainian drone strikes curbed production, data from market sources and LSEG showed.
Source: Reuters
