Category: Market

Export shipments of bitumen by rail from Russian refineries increased to 75,070t in August from 48,380t in July, according to rail forwarders, with active demand for late-summer road work in export markets.
Bitumen shipments from Russian ports also resumed right at the end of the month, when a 4,000t cargo left for west Africa, after none in July. The cargo left St Petersburg and will arrive in Nigeria in mid-September. The charterer was trading company Amur, although this could not be con-firmed.

Constraints on government budgets for road projects are helping to keep a lid on bitumen margins in Europe, exacerbated by strong crude and fuel oil prices, plentiful supply in the Mediterranean, and a closed arbitrage to key export outlets.
Work on road and highway projects in Europe is being restricted this year by high rates of inflation and budget deficits, both knock-on effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Demand in France and Germany has declined sharply this year, while consumption in the UK, Romania, and Italy has failed to rebound from last year’s steep fall.
European bitumen demand tends to take a dip in the peak summer holiday season from late July through August before recovering in September. But this year’s summer lull was especially pronounced and the autumn rebound has been slow to materialise so far.

Italian-integrated Eni will conduct maintenance work on its 210,500 b/d Sannazzaro refinery from mid-September to late
October, according to market participants.
The work will probably only affect part of the refinery, as previous partial maintenance was carried out between October and November last year. It was not clear which units were offline then, nor which will be offline this time. Eni’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Vortexa data shows that for three weeks in October last year, no crude arrived at Genoa – the port that serves the refinery. Crude arrived every other week in 2022. That suggests that maintenance work was done on some crude distillation capacity during last year’s program.
Market participants expect a relatively light autumn refinery maintenance season in Europe this year, as relatively high product margins continue to incentivize refiners to keep units online where possible.