Mid-Day Oil Summary: Crude Trades Lower

Crude markets have extended the earlier pull back amid ongoing oil demand concerns but remains within yesterday’s range.

• Brent APR 24 down -1.4% at 82.47$/bbl
• WTI APR 24 down -1.6% at 77.38$/bbl
• The UKMTO has reported a cargo vessel attack 70NM south east of Aden, Yemen, on Thursday in which the vessel caught fire, it said via X.
• The outlook for crude prices is dampened by China’s economy according to a note from RBC via Bloomberg.
• Global oil demand has been rising 1.7mbpd on the month through 21 February, supported by Chinese travel demand amid the Lunar New year Holiday, JP Morgan said in a note.
• The Federal Supreme Court of Iraq has ordered the KRG to hand over all oil and non-oil revenues to the federal government in a ruling on 21 February, according to S&P Commodity Insights, which is likely another roadblock in the restart of northern Iraqi exports via the pipeline to Turkey.
• The Al-Shamal refinery within the Baiji refining compound in northern Iraq has reopened after a 10-year halt, according to the office of the Iraqi PM, cited by Bloomberg.
• A fire broke out at S-Oil’s 370kbpd No 2 refinery in Onsan at 2:44PM local time (05:44 AM GMT) on Friday with fire authorities are still working to extinguish the blaze, fire department officials told Bloomberg.
• CDU capacity utilisation at China’s independent refineries averaged 65.5% in 2024 to date, up 2.58 percentage points on the year, according to OilChem.
• Crude oil inventory rates at Shandong’s independent refineries were largely stable in the seven days to Feb. 23, according to OilChem.
• Gains in the four week average implied demand for both gasoline and distillates in the EIA data yesterday helped cracks to regain ground from earlier losses. The data however continued to show low refinery utilisation as key facilities struggle to recover from outages.
  • US gasoline crack up 0.6$/bbl at 29.59$/bbl
  • US ULSD crack up 0.1$/bbl at 35.24$/bbl