Pic: Fuel oil barrels in Singapore

Singapore residual fuel oil inventories fell 6% in the week ended July 28 as net imports plummeted to their lowest in more than three years, official data showed on Thursday.

The net imports were weighed down by a surge in Singapore fuel oil exports, which hit a nine-month high of 592,000 tonnes in the week ended, led by a jump in exports to China.

Onshore fuel oil stocks fell by 1.53 million barrels, or about 241,000 tonnes, to a three-week low of 22.9 million barrels, or 3.61 million tonnes, Enterprise Singapore data showed.

Singapore’s net fuel oil imports plummeted 91% from the previous week to 93,000 tonnes, the lowest since June 2018 and well below the 2021 weekly average of 709,000 tonnes. Weekly figures, however, are volatile.

Compared with a year earlier, residual fuel stocks were 3% lower and below the 2021 weekly average of 23.28 million barrels.

The largest net imports were from Malaysia at 306,000 tonnes, followed by Brazil at 64,000 tonnes, Japan at 33,000 tonnes and Egypt at 26,000 tonnes.

The top net export destinations for Singapore fuel oil were China at 226,000 tonnes, the highest weekly volume since November 2018, followed by the Philippines at 65,000 tonnes and Hong Kong at 38,000 tonnes.

Fuel oil flows into east Asia, most of which come to Singapore, for July were assessed between 5.5 million tonnes and 6 million tonnes compared to June’s 4.23 million tonnes, the latest assessments by Refinitiv Oil Research showed.

The July volumes, the highest since January 2019, were “led by surging demand for straight-run cargoes amid a pervasively high-price environment and weak cracks, in particular from China in the wake of a tax clamp-down on bitumen mixture imports,” Refinitiv Oil Research said.

“Looking to August, we expect inflows to be lower on-month, with 1.03 million tonnes assessed for western arbitrage barrels to date, keeping market fundamentals tight.”

Marex Media