Tampa: PotashCorp said late last week that it had begun negotiations for third-quarter molten sulfur contract prices for Tampa. Mosaic started its talks a week earlier. Progress toward a resolution has been slow.
Pretty much everyone agrees the price will go down—the question is how much. A decrease of between $10/lt and $30/lt was expected. Supply was running somewhat ahead of demand, which was putting pressure on molten prices in the Gulf area.
PotashCorp was still working to restore its processing facility at White Springs late last week, and was expected to begin making MAP again on July 15-16. The outage following Tropical Storm Debby was adding to the surplus sulfur supply.
Valero Energy was repairing its sulfur recovery system at its 156,000 barrel-per-day McKee refinery at Sunray, Texas. A malfunction caused a sulfur dioxide release.