Weekly Bitumen Report: A Weak Market in the First Week of the New Year

In the first week of 2023, the leader of the Republicans could not win the election of USA Senate after several times of voting which was an unprecedented even in America during the last 100 years. This incident led to an easier path for Joe Biden for the next 2 years.

In the last week of 2022, it was heard that Putin talked about peace and compromise between Russia and Ukraine for the first time but the missile attacks of Ukraine to a garrison and death of 64 Russian troops proved that a clear ending for this war cannot be imagined.

At the first days of 2023, the head of International Monetary Fund warned that the one third of global economy will face a recession in 2023. The slow economic growth of America, European Union, and China was observed at the same time.

Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva has also warned that: “the next coming months will be difficult time for China and China will observe the negative effects of its economic growth and the world will be affected accordingly”.

By the increase of USD value against Iran Rial, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran was changed. As a result, Iran Rial was somehow recovered but it has not been stabilized yet.

After 3 weeks and observing upward trend of oil price, it decreased as a result of outbreak of COVID in China and Singapore’s fuel dropped 32 USD in the first 2 working day of New Year.

Singapore’s bulk bitumen price increased 5 USD on 3 January and reached 510 USD and again fell 5 USD on 4 January to stay at the level of 505 USD.

Bahrain bitumen price remained unchanged in the range of 375 USD and South Korea’s bitumen reached 385$ with a fall of 5 USD.

In Iran and by the increase of USD value against Iran Rial, the refineries again competed up to 75% and on the whole, during the last 10 days of 2022, over 84K MT bulk bitumen was exported from Iran.

In December 2022, bitumen price in India decreased up to 48 USD overall which was a sign of weak market in India.

The economic activists hope that the market gets recovered in the second week of January 2023 and by the end of New Year holidays.

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