We continue to see strength across the naphtha complex, although we appear to now be approaching the dangerous realm of potential buy-side saturation with rising selling in naphtha cracks in Europe, alongside selling in the E/W.
The Dated market has retained its strength well; although there was some weakness from a sell-off in a flat price. There is good buying in CFDs and rolls from trade houses, although liquidity can be thin.
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The September Brent futures contract has witnessed a weaker morning amid the flat price, falling from above $84.50/bbl at 06:45 BST to $84.10/bbl as of 11:30 BST (time of writing). Sentiment likely remains pressured following the poor Chinese economic data announcements from this week, with market players now awaiting cues of stronger stimulus measures at the Third Plenum this week. Furthermore, China is reportedly planning to cut carbon emissions in its coal power industry by methods such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage, in addition to attempting to fire power plants using coal mixed with either green ammonia or biomass. Russia’s exports of crude oil fell to an average of 3.11mb/d in the four weeks ending 14 July, their lowest level since January 2024. The drop was predominantly in shipments from Russia’s Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga, where exports dropped by 11% in two weeks. This afternoon, the market is likely to turn its attention to US macro data, notably US retail sales (released today at 13:30 BST), which will impact expectations around the timing of a policy rate cut by the Fed. Finally, at the time of writing, the front-month and six-month futures spread stood at $0.90/bbl and $3.75/bbl, respectively.
With European VLSFO in backwardation in the prompt months, physical traders will note that the arb is open and we should see VLSFO from Europe start to flow to Asia.
The September Brent futures flat price has had a fairly flat afternoon, with the exception being its dip to just below $84.50/bbl from $85.10/bbl between 14:30 BST and 14:45 BST.
Technical indicators showed the major futures contracts softening, with the RSI for ICE gasoil and Brent neutral and the RSI for RBOB dropping out of the overbought territory as gasoline traded extremely flat in the week.
Brent crude futures opened on Monday morning and has traded rangebound around $85/bbl in its Sep’24 contract.
Long Aug/Sep 380 China’s average daily oil refining throughput slowed in June, a third month of declines, after more domestic plants shut their operations for maintenance. The Asian nation processed 58.32 million tons of crude last month, 4.3% lower than
In the week ending 09 July, managed-by-money participants took a risk-on approach to the benchmark Brent and WTI crude oil futures, adding a combined 13.5mb (+2.47%) to their long positions and a 1.6mb (+1.35%) to their short positions
