Global product markets weekly: Global product stocks continue to build, weighing on margins

For the week commencing 5 February, refinery margins weakened for most refining centres. However, with the exception of Europe, all other regional refinery margins remained above year-ago levels. Total weekly stocks for gasoline, middle distillates and residual fuel oil in the US, NW Europe, Japan, Singapore and the Middle East increased, which put pressure on regional product crack spreads. Only middle distillate stocks in Asia reported a weekly stock draw, which particularly helped support jet/kero prices in Asia. Crude prices continued to tumble last week, with most global crude benchmark prices falling by US$3/bbl on the previous week. The Dated Brent crude price still held a weekly average price greater than US$65/bbl, but this was partially supported by a brief outage on the Forties Pipeline System. This, however, was not enough to stop Dated Brent from falling to a seven-week low.