Weekly Bitumen Report: Time is Needed for a Clear Direction 

407 days after Russia’s war against Ukraine, it seems that France and some other countries of the European Union started attempts to abolish the war. In the meantime, Macron, the president of France travelled to China. Still, there is not any clear prediction of the economic effects of the probable peace. 

On April 2, the members of OPEC+ announced an unexpected decision about the production cut up to 1.66 million barrels per day. As a result of this decision, the oil prices surged around 4 USD in the international markets on Monday and it reached 84 USD that was equal to over 5% growth in the prices.

As a result, the daily production will decrease by 3.66 million which is approximately equal to 3.7% of the global oil demand.

The increase in oil price led to the jump in Singapore’s HSFO CST180 by around 40 USD within the last 3 days and it reached 465 USD.

However, on April 5, Singapore’s bulk bitumen traded at 470 USD after a strange fall of 20 USD and South Korea’s bitumen price reached 420 USD which was the lowest price during the last weeks.

For the second consecutive week, Bahrain bitumen was traded at 355 USD.

Bitumen price in India is expected to experience another surge in mid. April due to high demand.

Iran’s situation is somehow complicated. While US dollar was following an uptrend during the New Year holiday, it started to fall by the start of official working days and the prices increased accordingly.

But, the pricing formula got the same as last month’s prices upon the instruction of Iran’s president about the equity rate of the USD against the Iran Rial, and as a result, the vacuum bottom decreased by around 20%, while the refineries competed for around 64% over the vacuum bottom. This situation created complexities for the exporters and buyers to discover the actual bitumen price of Iran and the gap between the highest and the lowest prices got too wide.

At the same time, Iran’s bulk bitumen price increased more compared to the packed bitumen due to high demand and it seems that the market of Iran needs some time to find its correct orientation. 

In such a situation, Infinity Galaxy still recommends that buyers make any deal with caution and deep insight into market changes.

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