Asia’s fuel oil market held steady on Thursday, while onshore inventories in Singapore fell after a three-week build.
Weekly residual fuel oil stocks slipped to four-week lows in Singapore as net imports eased after a recent spike, official data showed on Thursday.
The decline in inventories and expectations of tighter supplies for the first half of July has kept prices buoyed in recent trading sessions, though Western arbitrage imports remained high amid a wide East-West fuel oil price spread.
Singapore’s cash premium for 0.5% very-low sulfur fuel oil MFO05-SIN-DIF was pegged little changed at $17.51 a metric ton to cargo quotes, while the product’s front-month refining margin LFO05SGDUBCMc1 closed at a premium of $13.64 a barrel at the Asia close (0830 GMT).
The high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) market was steady throughout the week, with spot 380-cst HSFO cash premium FO380-SIN-DIF pegged at $2.33 a ton on Thursday, though front-month refining margin FO380DUBCKMc1 closed higher at a discount of $7.86 a barrel, based on Refinitiv data.
In tenders, Taiwan’s CPC bought 40,000 tonnes of VLSFO for delivery between August and September at Keelung. The seller was oil major Shell, trade sources said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Formosa sold 40,000 tonnes of main column bottoms for loading between July 13 and 17, at a discount of about $88 a ton to 0.5% VLSFO cargo quotes.
SINGAPORE INVENTORIES O/SING1
Onshore fuel oil stocks STKRS-SIN fell 13% to 18.54 million barrels (2.92 million tonnes) in the week ended June 21, snapping a three-week build, Enterprise Singapore record displayed.
Weekly net imports, calculated by subtracting total exports from total imports, fell 7% to 739,000 tons, after more than doubling in the previous week.
