Weekly Bitumen Report: A Promising Market in August and September

On July 26, the Federal Reserve of USA increased interest rate to its highest level i.e. 0.25% during the last 22 year to control the inflation and it reached the range of 5.25 – 5.5%.


Right now, the inflation of America has decreased for 12 frequent months and now, it is about 3% and its interest rate has reached by around 5% from almost zero level.


In the meantime, the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) announced that inflation rate of Euro region has reached its lowest level during the last 16 months.


However, the uptrend of Brent crude oil and WTI continued, it showed that even after the increase of interest rate by Federal Reserve due to the report of EIA about the reduction in oil and fuel reserves, the surge of oil price was observed.


After a break of several months, the concerns about restrictions in supply and hopes for the improvement in economic situation of China led to the empowerment of global oil price up to above 80 USD and bullish sentiment has been building for weeks in oil markets, and it seems most analysts expect supply constraints to push prices higher.


However, more growth of crude oil prices is still dependent on more improvement of economic situation of China.


On July 26, Singapore’s HSFO CST180 reached over 500 USD with an average growth of 19 USD from Monday, 24 July.

In the meantime, Singapore and South Korea’s bitumen were traded at 450 and 395 USD, respectively.
According to the latest report of Argus, the local prices of bitumen have increased in China.


Bitumen price in Europe increased more compared to the last week and Bahrain raised its bitumen price by about 20 USD to reach 410 USD.


In India, 4 severe drops of bitumen price and its stability on 15 July were observed and it is heard that a rise of 20 USD is expected to happen on August, 1.


In Iran, the refineries competed for vacuum bottom purchases over 70% after the increase of 10% on the base price of vacuum bottom and relative stability of USD against Iran Rial. As a result, bitumen price in Iran increased more than 50 USD compared to the last 21 days.



It seems that by approaching the end of monsoon and its coincidence with the surge of oil price, a more promising export market of bitumen can be seen in August and September.


Our experts at Infinity Galaxy are ready to assist the role players of the market with better services and competitive prices.


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