Weekly Bitumen Report: Hopes for a Positive Ending in 2022 for the Export of Packed Bitumen

The Senate election of the United States was held while neither the red storm of the Republicans was observed nor the strong support of the blue Democrats and it seems that the Senate parliament will be run by the Republicans and this will usually happen in each period. Yet, it is not clear that how the result of this election will affect the presidential election of president Biden within the next 2 years.

On Tuesday, the head of World Bank warned about the signs of global increase of the prices and escalation of inflation. However, China’s economic growth as well as the world’s economic growth have seriously decreased comparing to what was already expected and hence, we cannot be optimistic about the future of world economy.

On Monday, 7 November, crude oil was traded at 97 US dollars after the 5% growth of the last week and this support continued till 9 November.

However, the average of Singapore’s fuel dropped by around 14 US dollars that might be due to the fear of fall in China’s economic growth.

In India and after an increase of 30 US dollars of bitumen prices on 1 November, it is heard that the second half of November will face another increase too.

After 5 consecutive weeks of price stability, Bahrain will probably increase the bitumen price by around 15 US dollars within the next week.

On 9 November, Singapore and South Korea bulk bitumen were traded unchanged at the level of 570 US dollars and 450 US dollars, respectively.

In Iran, the hopes for crude oil price increase, the fall of Rial value against US dollars, and the flow of new capitals in the export markets like bitumen led to see an unprecedented record of competitions among the refineries in a way that only in one week, 5 competitions were heled in the different cities with the average percentage of 75.6% on the base price of vacuum bottom and this was the first time that IME registered such a record.

Of course, during the last ten days, more than 60,000 tons of bulk cargo have been loaded from the southern ports of Iran, and this indicates the high demand in the market.

By the end of monsoon in the different countries and approaching the end of 2022, it seems that most of the companies should clarify their annual financial status till the end of the year and all of the export companies hope to see a growing market of packed bitumen in the remaining time before the end of the year.

This article was prepared by Razieh Gilani, the export manager of Infinity Galaxy (www.infinitygalaxy.org).