Home / Oil & Energy / Oil & Companies News / Brent/Dubai Aug EFS spread stays steady as eyes on OPEC+ meeting

Brent/Dubai Aug EFS spread stays steady as eyes on OPEC+ meeting

The front-month Brent/Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps, or EFS, spread was near-steady midmorning May 31 as the market eyes the outcome of the OPEC+ meeting scheduled for June 1.

The August Brent/Dubai EFS was pegged at $3.22/b at 11 am (0300 GMT) in Singapore May 31, narrowing 2 cents/b from the Asian close May 28, S&P Global Platts data showed.

The Brent/Dubai EFS is a key indicator of the spread between light, sweet and heavy, sour crudes, and a wider EFS makes crude priced against Dubai more economically attractive for Asian refiners compared with Brent-linked ones.

The alliance of oil producers is scheduled to meet June 1 to discuss its planned easing of oil supplies in June and July despite concerns over the pandemic in Asia and the imminent return of Iranian crude.

Market participants forecast OPEC+ to continue easing supply cuts as originally planned despite the various factors weighing on demand.

OPEC+ countries, which held almost 7 million b/d of production offline in April, are in the process of boosting output by about 2.1 million b/d from May-July — roughly 2% of prepandemic demand — of which 1.4 million b/d will come from Saudi Arabia.

A brighter Western demand recovery could prompt the alliance to stick to its original plan as summer demand in the West could help absorb the excess barrels expected to flood the market, sources said.

The August/September Dubai time spread was pegged at 48 cents/b, widening 1 cent/b from Asian close on May 28.
Source: Platts

Recent Videos

Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and International Shipping