Asia’s diesel markets showed further signs of weakening, with refining margins, spot cash premiums and timespreads continuing to give back the past month’s gains.
The fronth-month timespreads fell to a $1.05-1.1 per barrel backwardation, their narrowest since early September.
Refiners’ offers tapered down for December spot cargoes, while most were close to concluding their term sales for next year delivery cargoes.
So far, term negotiations were at premiums of 20-80 cents per barrel in northeast Asia, multiple trade sources said, though further details were waiting to be firmed up.
Meanwhile, the east-west price spreads narrowed further to discounts of $65 per ton for December and $45 per ton for January. This compares with freight rates of nearly $50 per ton for shipping around 90,000 tons of refined fuels on the Middle East-northwest Europe route.
Refining margins fell slightly more than $1 from the previous session to $22.4 a barrel
Softening for the third straight session this week, cash differentials were at $1.68 per barrel.
Regrade barely moved, maintaining at around premiums of 60 cents per barrel.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– No deal for gasoil or jet fuel
INVENTORIES
– U.S. crude stocks fell while fuel inventories rose last week, market sources said, citing American Petroleum Institute figures on Tuesday.
– Middle distillates stocks held at Fujairah Oil Industry Zone were at their highest since June last year at 3.39 million barrels for the week ended November 24, according to industry information service S&P Global Commodity Insights.
NEWS
– OPEC+ is likely to leave output levels unchanged at its meeting on Sunday while focusing talks on a theoretical topic of how much oil its members can produce so the group can decide future policies, three OPEC+ sources said.
– Nigeria’s Dangote has signed a contract with Engineers India Ltd ENGI.NS to help double its refining capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in three years, its head Aliko Dangote told a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.
– Leonid Fedun, a co-founder of Lukoil, has sold his roughly $7 billion stake in the Russian company, three sources said and data showed, completing a 30-year ride that made Lukoil a global force but lately saw it shrinking fast under sanctions.
Source: Reuters
