Asia Distillates-Markets turn quiet; China’s Nov exports come in focus
Asia’s middle distillates markets turned slightly quiet, as evidenced from the lack of deals on the trading window, with talks of a shift in China’s export volumes for November coming into focus.
Talks of some transference in export quotas by one of China’s key oil majors to enable more jet fuel exports emerged, with traders saying this will likely alleviate earlier regional supply tightness of fuel.
Buying will likely cease from China in this case, one trader said, though the market’s supply-demand balance should remain strong given the opened arbitrage window between Asia and the U.S. West Coast.
Jet fuel premiums slipped by 2 cents to 89 cents a barrel, as a reflection of the market weakness.
However, this could end up resulting in limited diesel supplies in return, a second source said, which could be supportive for the market fundamentals until next month.
Also, some term contract offers did emerge for 2025 loading cargoes, with Qatar’s QE offering gas-to-liquid diesel cargoes via a tender that closes tomorrow with same-day validity.
Refining margins for 10ppm sulphur gasoil were little changed from the previous trading session at around $15.7 a barrel.
Cash differentials fell by 3 cents from the previous session, reflecting the ready availability of offers for December cargoes.
Regrade gained slightly to a premium of 75 cents a barrel, compared with 57 cents a barrel in the previous trading session.
SINGAPORE CASH DEALS
– No deals for both fuels
INVENTORIES
– U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, while distillate and gasoline inventories were seen down, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday.
NEWS
– Iran has approved a plan to increase oil production by 250,000 barrels per day, the oil ministry’s news website Shana reported on Monday.
– Libya’s oil production is nearing 1.5 million barrels per day, the country’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said in a post on X on Monday.
– OPEC oil output rebounded in October from its lowest this year the previous month as Libya resolved a political crisis, a Reuters survey found, although a further Iraqi effort to meet its cuts pledged to the wider OPEC+ alliance limited the gain.
– French oil major TotalEnergies predicts global oil demand will peak after 2030 in its two most likely energy transition scenarios, neither of which will limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Climate agreement, it said in its annual energy outlook report on Monday.
– Oil prices traded in a narrow range on Tuesday ahead of what is expected to be an exceptionally close U.S. presidential election, after rising more than 2% in the previous session as OPEC+ delayed plans to hike production in December.
– A late season tropical storm predicted to intensify into a category 2 hurricane in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico this week could reduce U.S. oil production by about 4 million barrels, researchers said.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Trixie Yap; Editing by Vijay Kishore)