Weekly Bitumen Report: Will the Uptrend of Iran Bitumen Price Continue?
While there uncertainties between the supply pressures and concerns for the demands in the oil market, the storage of crude oil and petrol decreased in America in the last week.
John Ivans, an analyst of PVM institute, believes that a main reason of the emergence of positive outlook in the oil market is the report of Oil Institute of America which will probably report less reduction in the amount of storage.
In the meantime, the energy ministry of Russia announced the voluntary daily reduction up to 500K drums will continue till August. On July 19, International Energy Agency (IEA) and OPEC confirmed the continuation of increase in oil production of Iran. Hence, in the latest report of IEA it was announced that Iran’s oil production reached 3.10 million barrels per day in June 2023.
At the same time, while crude oil reached around 80 USD, Singapore’s HSFO CST180 and its bitumen recorded a surge in the prices on Wednesday and the numbers of 472 USD and 450 USD were registered, respectively.
Bitumen price in South Korea increased 5 USD to reach at 400 USD.
It is heard that Bahrain is expecting a twenty-dollar increase in its bitumen price to reach 410 USD.
In the Europe and Spain, the bitumen price increased significantly and Spain bitumen price got close to the level of 500 USD.
After 4 frequent drops in India bitumen price, it remained stable and unchanged on 15 July which is a good sign of improvement in the market and the possibility of serious increase in bitumen prices of India is expected on 1 August.
In Iran, by the devaluation of USD against Iran Rial and severe competition of vacuum bottom purchases among the refineries, bitumen prices increased drastically in a way that only 50K MT vacuum bottom was supplied in IME while the recorded demand was 130K MT. As a result, the prices increased at least 20 USD compared to last week prices.
The boiling hot weather and slowness of port operations have caused issues and slowed down the export procedures. However, it seems that the coming month and generally August can experience a promising bitumen markets after a periodic recession for some months.
Infinity Galaxy team advises the role players of the market to make their deals with full awareness of market trends and consult with our experts to make the right decisions.
This article was prepared by Razieh Gilani, the export manager of Infinity Galaxy (www.infinitygalaxy.org).
