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Asia’s oil refiners, responsible for meeting about a third of the world’s fuel consumption, are getting ready to go elsewhere for crude should Saudi Arabia and Russia’s latest pledged output cuts deprive them of barrels.
The two producer countries said on Monday that they will prolong and deepen output cuts into August. Along with reductions they already made, and ongoing curbs by other nations in the OPEC+ alliance, total supply curtailments will amount — on paper at least — to 3.1 million barrels a day, or about 3% of global consumption.
Traders in Asia said there’s a plentiful supply of barrels from producers outside of the 23-nation alliance — particularly in locations like the US, West Africa and the North Sea — that they will turn to if the region does bear the brunt of the latest cuts.
Any influx into Asia of oil from the Atlantic Basin could be a mixed blessing for Middle East producers. On the one hand, it could help to drain supplies in the US and Europe, home to the world’s most traded oil futures contracts. On the other, it could mean losing a share of the fastest growing demand market.
So far, the production jolts by Saudi Arabia and its allies have failed to make any meaningful difference to headline oil prices, which have been stuck at between $70 and $80 a barrel for weeks. That said, prices for grades that are similar to those that the kingdom pumps have rallied more strongly, catapulting them above Brent last week.
In the next few days, Saudi Arabia will publish official selling prices for its crude for different buying regions around the world. Those numbers, often mirrored closely by other Saudi Arabia’s neighboring producers, can be pivotal in defining demand from different regions. They are normally released by the 5th of each month.
Before the latest Saudi cuts, traders estimated that prices for August-loading cargoes from Saudi Arabia would be kept unchanged — at what many of them already said they considered to relatively high levels. Several traders said they anticipated a price hike if Saudi Arabia’s intention is to tighten supplies.
Demand in the Asian spot market was healthy last month, but expectations for relatively high pricing for Saudi oil in August may deter interest for term Middle East cargoes to Asia in this cycle, the traders said.
Brent-Dubai
The spread between two crude benchmarks Brent and Dubai has also narrowed sharply in the past month, indicating that Brent-linked crude could be more appealing. Cheaper shipping costs also lower the overall import bill for long-haul deliveries from the Atlantic.
Refiners in South Korea, India, China and Taiwan are able to swing between barrels from the Middle East and the arbitrage cargoes. For example, they can use the US grade West Texas Intermediate or North Sea Forties instead of Abu Dhabi’s Murban, and switch out Upper Zakum or Oman for Norway’s Johan Sverdrup or Mars from the US.
There are already signs that Asian demand for West African grades is creeping up.
China’s refiners already snapped up a relatively large number of Angolan cargoes, while state refiners in Indonesia and India also bought some Nigerian cargoes for August loading, said traders involved in those markets.
So-called arbitrage flows from North Sea to Asia also resumed, meaning it’s profitable to move barrels over thousands of miles.
In the North Sea, Johan Sverdrup was most in demand. It was last bid at a premium of $1.70 a barrel more than benchmark Dated Brent in a pricing window run by S&P Global Commodities Insights, known as Platts by traders. It is now more expensive than Ekofisk which is lighter and sweeter and usually has a higher price.
Two supertankers are currently hauling North Sea’s Forties grade en route to China, estimated to arrive next month, according to ship-tracking data. Those are the first cargoes taken by Asian buyers since January, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
