ARA fuel oil stocks drop 11%, small losses in gasoline, diesel and jet

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) - Fuel oil stocks in ARA fell more than 11% last week amid a broad sweep of oil product inventory losses, according to media reports of Insights Global data.

The tonnage of high sulfur fuel oil and marine fuel (0.5% sulfur) held in independent tanks in the trading hub dropped 163,000 mt over the week to May 14 to stand at 1.265 million mt.

Year-on-year, fuel oil stocks were down 478,000 mt.

Cracks for month-ahead high sulfur fuel oil barge paper turned a corner on Tuesday according to Quantum data, nudging higher to arrest a sharp decline since late April.

The refining margin indicator versus Brent has dropped from just above minus $8/b on April 21 down to around minus $10.25/b on May 13.

There were small week-on-week falls in gasoline, middle distillate, and jet stocks as well.

Gasoline stocks dropped 31,000 mt (2.5%), diesel and gasoil stocks dropped 63,000 mt (2.9%), and jet stocks fell 12,000 mt (1.2%).