Singapore residual fuel oil inventories fell 2% in the week ended Aug. 4 to a more than four-month low as net import volumes remained depressed, official data showed.
Onshore fuel oil stocks fell by 466,000 barrels, or about 73,000 tonnes, to 22.44 million barrels, or 3.53 million tonnes, Enterprise Singapore data showed.
While Singapore’s net fuel oil imports recovered from a more than three-year low of 93,000 tonnes in the previous week, to 436,000 tonnes, they were well below the 2021 weekly average of 700,000 tonnes. Weekly figures, however, are volatile.
Compared with a year earlier, residual fuel stocks were 7% higher and above the 2021 weekly average of 23.25 million barrels.
The largest net imports were from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 222,000 tonnes, followed by Malaysia at 141,000 tonnes, Brazil at 97,000 tonnes and the United States at 95,000 tonnes.
Singapore fuel oil imports from the UAE were at a more than four-month high, while imports from the United States were at a three-month high.
The top net export destinations for Singapore fuel oil were Hong Kong at 104,000 tonnes, followed by South Korea at 66,000 tonnes and South Africa at 40,000 tonnes.
Fuel oil flows into east Asia, most of which come to Singapore, for July were assessed at 6.2 million tonnes compared to June’s 4.23 million tonnes, the latest assessments by Refinitiv Oil Research showed.
The July volumes, the highest since March, 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 1.5 million tonnes assessed for western arbitrage barrels to date, keeping market fundamentals tight.”
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Roslan Khasawneh; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)