Global product markets weekly: Refiners still upbeat despite crude price spike

For the week commencing 7 May, the Dated Brent crude price hurtled past the US$75 weekly average barrier last week. This comes after the US announced their earlier-than-expected withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. As such, we have increased our Brent price outlook for 2018 from US69/bbl to US$74/bbl with the expectation that Iran's crude production would have fallen by 500 kb/d by end-2018. Due to the strength in Brent, coupled with growing pipeline constraints across the Permian basin in the US, the Brent-WTI has trended back to a differential of US$6/bbl.