Crude draws continue to support the oil complex

ICE Brent crude prices continued to rise, reaching, 76.4 $/b on early Thursday, amid drawing inventories in the US and despite a rise of the US dollar, in light of the Fed’s increasingly hawkish stance during yesterday’s FOMC announcements. Indeed, fed members are now evenly split between 1 and 2 interest rate hikes for 2022. US petroleum stocks declined by another 2.1 mb (3.3 mb if we account for the SPR release) last week. A strong rebound in refining runs (+1 mb/d w/w) and high gasoline imports (700 kb/d for the east coast, likely coming from Europe) supported refined product stocks. 

Looking at US crude supply, outages multiply, with Canadian crude imports could be reduced due to a mechanical issue at the Syncrude site. As much as 20% of their term agreement could be reduced during the outage. The Suncor site delivers 0.6 mb/d of light crude oil, which means 120 kb/d could be affected by the outage. 

In Asia, both Singapore refining margins and crude stocks were increasingly bullish yesterday, despite the crude price hike. Japanese crude stocks dropped by 5 mb last week, while Singapore margins hit an 18-month high, amid rallying fuel oil and diesel cracks.