The arrivals of feedstock, including crude oil, fuel oil, and bitumen mixtures, at ports in Shandong Province and Tianjin City imported by independent refineries and traders totaled 10.39 million tonnes in March, a monthly increase of 3.87%, per OilChem tracking of the shipping schedules.
The arrivals of crude oil stood at 8.40 million tonnes, rising 6.92% from February. The arrivals of fuel oil remained high at 1.49 million tonnes, basically flat from 1.47 million tonnes in February. The bitumen mixtures arrivals, on the other hand, dropped 25.7% month on month at approximately 0.5 million tonnes in March.
Specially, the Russia crude oil arrivals, which jumped 47% MoM at 3.8 million tonnes in March, took up nearly 37% of the total feedstock arrivals. The momentum was allowed by independent refineries purchasing Sokol crude oil defaulted by Indian refineries, which amounted to 1.26 million tonnes, surging 328% MoM.
Source: Mysteel OilChem
Looking ahead, it is expected that the arrivals of feedstock will fall in April in the face of more independent refineries carrying out maintenance in the month and poor refining profits, in addition to remaining feedstock inventory.
Written by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com
Edited by Navy Liu, liuchuanjun@mysteel.com