SINGAPORE: Asia’s cash premium for very-low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) market climbed for a fifth consecutive session on Friday, driven by stronger bids for July-loading cargoes.
The cash premium was pegged higher at $11.05 a metric ton over Singapore quotes, recovering to a four-week high. During the Platts window, Gunvor bought 20,000 metric tons of 0.5% VLSFO from Trafigura at a premium of $15 a tonne for loading between July 1 and 5.
Asia’s front-month margin for 0.5% VLSFO closed higher a premium of $13.53 a barrel at the Asia close (0830 GMT), hitting over four-month highs.
Meanwhile, high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) held relatively steady this week. The spot 380-cst HSFO cash premium was pegged stable at $2.00 a metric ton on Friday, while front-month margin eased to a discount of $8.63 a barrel at the Asia close.
Bunker sales hit four-month highs in May at the UAE’s Fujairah, recovering for a third consecutive month, latest Fujairah Oil Industry Zone data showed.
Total bunker volumes, excluding lubricants, were at 620,388 cubic metres (about 615,000 metric tons) in May, showed data from the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone published late on Thursday by industry information service S&P Global Commodity Insights.
The sales were up 4.0% month on month but were 16.7% lower than the same month last year. Overall demand for bunkers at Fujairah has softened this year, Dubai-based trade sources said.
Fuel oil inventories in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) refining and storage hub rose 9% to 1.28 million metric tons in the week to June 15, rebounding to three-week lows, latest data from Dutch consultancy Insights Global showed.
Oil slipped on Friday as a weaker economic outlook and the prospect of further interest rate hikes dogged sentiment, outweighing a tighter market in the second half of the year owing to higher Chinese demand and OPEC+ supply cuts.
The Kremlin’s changes to the way it taxes oil sales were forced by Western sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine and will hit its oil production capacity over time, US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.
Indian state retailers’ sales of gasoline fell in the first half of June from the same period last month as well as a year earlier, preliminary sales data showed on Friday, as a heat wave curtailed mobility.
The US Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were hit in a global hacking campaign that exploited a vulnerability in widely used file-transfer software, officials said.
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