FUJAIRAH DATA: Oil product stocks drop 5% in first week of 2024

Stockpiles of oil products at the UAE's Port of Fujairah dropped 5% in the week ended Jan. 8, with heavy distillates used as ship fuel and power generation falling to a five-month low, according to data from the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone.

The total fell to 18.238 million barrels as of Jan. 8 from a 12-week high a week earlier, the FOIZ data published Jan. 10 showed. Stockpiles fell 16% on the year in 2023 after climbing 29% in 2022, according to the port data provided to S&P Global Commodity Insights since 2017.

For the latest week, light distillates such as gasoline and naphtha fell 6% to 6.831 million barrels, a two-week low. Middle distillates such as diesel and jet fuel jumped 41%, the biggest one-week gain since February 2023, to 2.797 million barrels, a four-week high. Heavy distillates dropped 13% to 8.610 million barrels, the lowest since July. Traders said there is strong ship fuel demand for high sulfur fuel oil at the port while low sulfur fuel oil bunker premiums are still quite high.

Exports of products except for fuel oil rose to 5.5 million barrels in the week started Jan. 1, the most since June, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data. South Korea was the largest destination at almost 2 million barrels, the data showed. All of them are categorized under clean products. Fuel oil exports came to 1.5 million barrels for the week, down from 1.9 million barrels a week earlier, according to Kpler data. Some 571,000 barrels were headed for Saudi Arabia.