Weekly Bitumen Report: The Continued Instabilities in the Market of Bitumen and Oil Products

Same as the last 4 weeks, the market was struggling with various instabilities. At the beginning of the week, oil price dropped to 97 US dollars and by the time of preparing this report, it reached around 107 US dollars which can be attributed to the geopolitical tensions and Russia- Ukraine war, outbreak of Corona in China, high inflation in the Europe, America, and England, release of strategic oil reserves by the USA, and lack of production increase by OPEC as Russia is under the global sanctions.

Although there are demands in some markets, some of the suppliers are still supplying their old commitments and the importers are receiving their old orders and there was not any significant competition in the markets and even it is expected India experiences stability or a trivial drop in rates by 15 April.

The equity of US dollars against Iran Rial watched an upward trend at the beginning of the week, and it started to fall when Iran Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the release of Iran blocked properties in other countries. However, disagreements on JCOPA are still observed.

The instabilities that are seen in all of the markets can be seen obviously in the difference between fuel oil and Singapore bulk prices. The difference between the minimum and maximum bitumen prices was around 15 US dollars in the last week.

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Such instabilities affected bulk vessels that were loaded, and the buyers were wondering about this situation.
In such an unstable trend in the market, the increasing or decreasing elements of determining bitumen price were almost equal, and the market can not find a specific trend.

On 21 April, it is expected that IME increases the price of vacuum bottom but its amount is not clear yet.
The dominant instability in the market advises the buyers to avoid any investment if they do not have a firm order.

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