Weekly Bitumen Report: Unclear Economic Status, The Leader of Market

Since the bankruptcy of three American banks, the brent price reached its highest level while the OPEC decision made on 2 April for 1.66-million-barrel cut and new economic data received from China show more support of the brent price increase. 

China economic data shows that in March 2023, the inflation speed reached the lowest rate from September 2021, and this is a positive vision of China’s probable actions to improve its economic growth.

 

Tina Teng, the analyst of CMC Markets, believes that Consumer Price Index (CPI) in China is less than expectation level in March, and China’s government will probably consider some incentives for more economic movements. This is despite the fact that the devaluation of US dollars is another superb support for crude oil price increase. 

In the meantime, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that the economic situation of Britain is worse than 19 other members of G20. This means Britain economic growth is even less than Russia, which is under the hardest sanctions imposed by the West. 

In another assessment of IMF, based on the new economic predictions of this financial entity announced on 11 April, the global economic growth will decrease 2.8% in the current year while last year, an increase of 3.4% was observed. 

All of the abovementioned items show confusion and the unclarity of economic situations in different countries of the world in 2023. 

During the last week, Singapore’s fuel CST180 showed the growth of 15 USD, and on 12 April, it reached approximately 480 USD. In the meantime, Singapore’s bitumen remained fixed in the level of 460 USD, and South Korea’s bitumen price reached 410 USD. The bitumen price in Bahrain is still fixed at 355 USD. 

The price of bitumen in Europe has somehow improved, and all European countries experienced a range of over 440 USD. 

In India, due to the high demand for bitumen and shortages in the stocks, the surge of around 16 USD is expected within the next 2 days. 

Iran market is still showing the high level of competitions among the refineries as well as the significant growth of bulk bitumen export in a way that, around 78K MT bulk bitumen was exported from southern ports of Iran during the last 6 days. 

At the same time, the average competition of over 81% to purchase vacuum bottom and partial stability of exchange rate have led to high prices of packed bitumen of Iran in some of the markets. However, it seems that the end consumers have no chance but to accept these levels of prices considering oil price and market trends. 

With respect to the above facts, the economic activists of the field should still make their purchase decisions wisely, and they are still advised to consider all the potential components while the purchase.

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