MOSCOW (MRC) -- US crude oil stockpiles rose last week, breaking a streak of eight weeks of declines, as imports surged to their highest in a year, reported Reuters with reference to the Energy Information Administration's statement.
Crude inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels in week to July 16 to 439.7 million barrels, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 4.5 million-barrel drop.
US crude imports last week rose to 7.1 million barrels per day (bpd), their highest since July 2020, boosting net crude imports to their loftiest since December at 4.6 million bpd. Exports also dropped 1.6 million bpd as the price differential between US crude futures and Brent crude has narrowed, making exports less attractive to foreign buyers.
Crude stocks have steadily declined throughout the year as overall demand rose and due to relatively tight supply worldwide with major oil producers constraining demand. This week, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia agreed to boost output.
Refinery operations were largely steady with crude runs down 86,000 bpd and utilization rates edged 0.4 percentage point lower to 91.4% in the week.
As MRC informed earlier, Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude oil exporter, will supply full contractual volumes of August-loading crude to at least five Asian customers. However, Saudi Aramco has turned down two of the buyers' requests for extra barrels.
We remind that Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), said in June he expects the company's deal with Saudi Aramco to materialise this year. Meanwhile, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of Saudi Aramco and the Governor of the Public Investment Fund, joined the board of Reliance as an independent director.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 953,400 tonnes in the first five months of 2021, which virtually corresponded to the same figure a year earlier. High denisty polyethylene (HDPE) shipments decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 607,8900 tonnes in January-May 2021, up by 33% year on year. Shipments of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas deliveries of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC