全球柴油库存高企令石油市场承压

据今日油价9月21日报道，尽管市场的大部分注意力都集中在汽油需求将以多快的速度复苏上，但全球各地经济和制造业活动的下降已导致包括柴油、汽油和航空燃料在内的馏分油供应过剩。在疫情期间，航空燃油需求出现了前所未有的暴跌，面对这种情况，炼油商纷纷转向其他馏分油的生产，而这些馏分油的库存已升至数十年来的最高水平。

近几周，柴油和其它中间馏分油的供过于求情况变得十分明显，以至于交易员们开始租用油轮来储存燃料，以便日后销售。

在馏分油库存远高于5年平均水平、全球燃料需求复苏乏力的情况下，炼油商没有太多动力消化增加的产量，炼油利润率因供过于求而大幅下滑。

国际能源署(IEA)本周在其月度旗舰石油市场报告中称，炼厂利润持续疲弱，对增加原油购买没有起到一丝的激励作用。

燃料需求疲弱继续抑制油价突破每桶40美元，尽管美国原油库存数据本周提振了油价。不过，美国能源信息署在公布截至9月11日的一周原油库存为440万桶的同时，也公布了9月第二周馏分燃料的生产量为350万桶,这些库存量仍比五年平均水平高出20%。

截至9月11日的当周，美国炼厂的原油日产量为1348.8万桶，较去年同期下降19.3%。馏分油库存增至1.793亿桶，同比增长31.2%。

馏分油库存一直在持续上升，尽管炼油商将更多的原油加工成汽油，而不是中间馏分油。据路透社专栏作家约翰?肯普(John Kemp)估计，去年同期，汽油与馏分油之比从1.4：1升至1.7 ：1。

美国需求疲软，中间馏分油也在努力寻找其他市场。在经济低迷的背景下，燃料需求复苏慢于预期，而航空燃料消耗仍处于不稳定状态，这已将全球馏分油库存推至多年高点，进而导致世界各地的炼油利润率都处于灾难性的低水平，使炼油厂无法将增加的原油加工成燃料。

航空燃料以外的炼油产品利润率也在下滑，因为在需求如此之低的情况下，炼油商不愿生产过多的航空燃料，而是更愿意生产其他馏分油。

例如，据Argus估计，新加坡燃料油精炼利润率本周暴跌至纪录低点，因炼油商希望最大限度地提高燃料油的产量而不是航空燃料油，导致供应增加。

从美国墨西哥湾沿岸到欧洲阿姆斯特丹-鹿特丹-安特卫普(ARA)交易中心，柴油和汽油等馏分油的库存异常高。

油轮所有者和油轮跟踪公司本周对彭博社表示，全球馏分油供应过剩日益加剧的最强烈信号之一，可能是交易商对租用油品油轮来储存柴油的兴趣日益浓厚。在西北欧，柴油和喷气燃料的浮式储存量正在上升，因为期货价格在晚些时候的交货价格高于前一个月的价格，这通常意味着供应过剩，因此贸易商有理由支付租用油轮的费用，并在以后出售产品时获得利润。

彭博社估计，柴油市场的期货溢价甚至高于原油，表明人们对馏分油浮式存储的兴趣可能高于原油。弱于预期的需求复苏迹象抑制了馏分油的消费，并导致市场供过于求，这将继续压低油价。

王佳晶 摘译自 今日油价

原文如下：

High Diesel Inventories Weigh On Oil Markets

While most of the market’s attention has been focused on how fast gasoline demand will recover, lower economic and manufacturing activity in all regions of the world has led to an oversupply in distillates, including diesel, gasoil, and jet fuel. Faced with an unprecedented crash in jet fuel demand amid the pandemic, refiners have geared toward making more of the other distillate fuels, whose stocks have risen to levels not seen in decades.

The glut in diesel and other middle distillates has become so evident in recent weeks that traders have started to charter tankers to store fuels for sale at a later date.

With distillate inventories sitting well above five-year averages and global fuel demand recovery faltering, refiners don’t have much incentive to process increased volumes because the refining margins have tumbled with the glut.

“Persistently weak refinery margins provide little incentive to boost crude purchases,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its monthly flagship Oil Market Report this week.

Weak demand for fuels continues to curb any price gains above $40, despite the fact that a U.S. crude inventory draw this week boosted prices. However, while reporting a crude oil inventory draw of 4.4 million barrels for the week to September 11, the U.S. Energy Information Administration also reported a build of 3.5 million barrels in distillate fuels for the second week of September, with those inventories still remaining more than 20 percent above the five-year average as air travel remains constricted by pandemic-related restrictions and concerns.

Crude oil inputs at U.S. refiners were 13.488 million bpd in the week to September 11, which was 19.3 percent lower than in the same week last year. Distillate inventories swelled to 179.3 million barrels, up by 31.2 percent from year ago.

Distillate stocks have been persistently rising, despite the fact that refiners have been processing more crude into gasoline instead of middle distillates. The gasoline-to-distillate ratio in the product slate has increased to 1.7 to 1 from 1.4 to 1 at the same time last year, according to estimates by Reuters columnist John Kemp.

Middle distillates are struggling to find markets amid weak demand outside the United States, too. Slower-than-expected fuel demand recovery amid the economic slump and still precariously low aviation fuel consumption have sent distillate stocks around the world to multi-year highs. This, in turn, has led to disastrously low refining margins in every part of the world, discouraging refiners to process increased volumes of crude into fuels.

Refining margins of products other than jet fuel are also slumping because refiners are now reluctant to produce too much aviation fuel with demand so low, instead preferring to make other distillates.

For example, the Singapore gasoil refining margins plunged this week to a record low, according to Argus estimates, as supply increased with refiners looking to maximize production of gasoil over jet fuel.

Stocks of distillates such as diesel and gasoil are uncharacteristically high everywhere, from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) trading hub in Europe.

Probably one of the strongest signals of a growing global glut in distillates is increased interest from traders to hire oil product tankers to store diesel as floating storage, tanker owners and tanker-tracking firms told Bloomberg this week. Floating storage of diesel and jet fuel is on the rise in northwest Europe with the contango – in which prices for delivery at later dates are higher than front-month prices that typically points to oversupply – widening and making sense for traders to pay for chartering tankers and still make profits when they sell the product later.

Bloomberg’s estimates show that the contango in the diesel market is even wider than it is for crude oil, suggesting that interest in floating storage of distillates could be higher than that for crude.

Weaker-than-expected demand recovery has depressed distillate fuel consumption and led to a glut, which is set to continue to depress oil prices.