Weekly Bitumen Report: Contradictory Signals in the Market
After 7 increasing weeks in the oil price trend, it faced a drop last week as a result of worries about slow improvements in China’s economy and increase of US dollar value. Tina Teng, the analyst of CMC Markets, believes that due to weak improvements in China’s economy, rise in US dollar value, and its decreasing effects on the prices, the growth of oil price might decrease to a little extent but OPEC+ showed that they are ready to do all the required actions to reduce supply and stabilise the market.
In the meantime, Aramco petroleum refinery of Saudi Arabia announced that they will supply the whole required oil of Asia continent for September. They estimated that Chinese buyers will get 50-52 million barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, which is much more than 38 million barrels purchased last month.
By the reduction in the prices for Chinese consumers in the last month, inflation got negative in this country for the first time during the last 2 years. The official statistics show that the consumer price index, which is a factor to estimate inflation, dropped 0.3% in July compared to the last year, and it can have a potential effect on the trend of the global economy.
The significant fall in Russia’s Ruble value made the country increase its interest rate of up to 12%. However, for the second successive month, the inflation rate reduced in England after America.
With the relative fall in the oil price in the first 3 days of the week, Singapore’s HSFO CST180 fell around 15 USD and settled at 550 USD. Singapore and South Korea recorded bitumen prices of 450 and 410 USD, respectively.
As mentioned in the last week report of Infinity Galaxy, the bitumen price in Bahrain raised 30 USD, and it was traded at 440 USD.
The bitumen price in the European Union remained in the range of 550-600 USD.
On August 16, Indian refineries increased bitumen prices 24.5 USD again, so it was the first time in the last 3 months that India observed a total surge of around 50 USD.
Despite the competition range of 50-70% among the Iranian refineries, bitumen price in Iran did not change considerably. Considering the possibility of increase in the base price of vacuum bottom and attraction of Iran bitumen prices compared to other markets, it seems there is still no new demand in the market, and Iran prices remained stable.
As the current trend of crude oil is unclear and it is possible to face sudden changes in the market, the activists of the field are advised to keep in touch with Infinity Galaxy team to experience a wise purchase.
This article was prepared by Razieh Gilani, export manager of Infinity Galaxy (www.infinitygalaxy.org).
