Commodity Tracker: 4 charts to watch this week
4. Norway’s Equinor aims for bigger share of Asian pie
What’s happening? North Sea crude oil suppliers are confident Asia’s firm base requirements will keep their exports to the Far East at healthy levels, despite the region’s volatile product margins and fragile fuel demand during the coronavirus pandemic, industry executives told S&P Global Platts at the 36th Asia Pacific Petroleum Virtual Conference in Singapore over September 14-16. Norway’s state-controlled Equinor, for one, is boosting its presence in the Asian oil market, having doubled crude sales to the region.....Three MORE
What next? Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Equinor has seized the opportunity to grab as much market share as possible amid ongoing output cuts by OPEC+. Chinese exports of Norwegian crude rose to 7.96 million mt over January-July, compared with just 119,000 mt a year earlier. Equinor has also extended its crude oil storage contract with the Korea National Oil Corporation, to store approximately 5 million barrels of oil at KNOC’s Yeosu storage tanks for marketing purposes in Northeast Asia. It is crucial for Asian refiners to have the flexibility to respond quickly to the volatile markets by adjusting refinery operations and crude slate, said JY Lim, oil markets adviser at S&P Global Platts Analytics, especially as OPEC+ started to trim back on production cuts....
HT: ZH