U.S. Gulf: The news early in the week was that prompt granular barge prices were taking off. The news by Thursday, however, was that they had fallen back.
Generally, the range for the week was put between $495-$525/st FOB, with the price quickly running up to $525/st FOB and then falling back to just below the $500/st FOB mark. By late Thursday, sources said the market was again on the rise, with sources calling it $500-$505/st FOB.
The price increase, depending on who you talked to, was either because of legitimate demand or trader hype – or a bit of both. Some sources said there had been a week’s worth of good demand from the Southern Plains and that inland supplies in those areas had been depleted. As a result, regional prices moved up, and there were unconfirmed reports of glitches in production at some inland plants.
Eastern Cornbelt: Fueled by NOLA barge values that climbed to as high as $525/st FOB at midweek before settling back to the low $500s/st, terminal prices in the Eastern Cornbelt region reportedly firmed to as high as $540-$550/st FOB last week – at least on paper.
Western Cornbelt: The urea market was surging last week. Driven by another swift spike in NOLA barge values during the final days of February, urea pricing out of regional terminals firmed to $525-$540/st FOB last week, a $55-$65/st jump from the previous week. The low end of the range was quoted in southern Missouri, while the upper end was reported in the Iowa market at midweek.
Effective Feb. 28, Koch’s urea postings in Oklahoma firmed to $550/st FOB Enid and Inola. That level was up $60/st from Koch’s Feb. 23 posting, and $85/st higher than the Feb. 15 reference price. Sources in the Southern Plains said brisk demand in that market, coupled with rumors of production problems and unconfirmed reports of plant outages at some locations, had depleted urea supplies. As a result, some were calling the Enid/Inola market as high as $555-$560/st FOB late in the week.
California: The granular urea market was quoted at $510-$535/st FOB in California, down slightly from last report. “We’ll see what the urea thing in the Gulf will bring,” commented one source.
Pacific Northwest: Granular urea pricing in the Pacific Northwest had firmed to $540/st FOB and $590/st rail-DEL by late February.
Western Canada: UAN-28 was quoted in the $417-$435/mt ($14.89-$15.54/unit) DEL range in the region, with the low reported in the Manitoba market and the upper end in Alberta.
Indonesia: Pusri is back in the export market. The conglomerate received export licenses in enough time to sell a few cargoes and call a tender before February ended.
The tender closed Tuesday, Feb. 28, just as the U.S. NOLA market was heating up.
Prior to the calling of the tender, sources report that two buyers each took cargoes of granular material at $425/mt FOB, a dramatic leap up from the last done business.
The tender closed with an additional $30 added to the price. Indevco took the 30,000 mt granular award at $455.05/mt FOB.
Details of the bids for 30,000 mt of granular urea from Kaltim follow.
| Bidding Company | US$/mt FOB |
| Indevco | 455.05 |
| Ameropa | 453.50 |
| Interframe | 451.05 |
| Helm | 451.05 |