AMMONIA
AMMONIA
Tampa/U.S. Gulf: The import ammonia market remained quiet last week, with expectations that talks will start soon for May shipments to Tampa.
In the meantime, there was talk that there was more interest in barges. There were reports late in the week of new business being worked, with speculation that prices may fall into the $540-$550/st FOB range. Sources said the wet weather conditions are starting to worry sellers, as end-users may have to switch to other nitrogens.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. imports were up 11 percent in February, to 672,146 st from the year-ago 604,236 st. July-February imports are up 9 percent, to 5.7 million st from the year-ago 5.24 million st.
Trinidad: PotashCorp announced April 9 that its Trinidad #04 ammonia plant will be shut down for 28 days beginning May 2. The shutdown is being taken to replace an internal heat exchanger in the ammonia converter. This outage will result in lost production of approximately 56,000 mt of ammonia.
Eastern Cornbelt: The ammonia market was tagged at $675-$695/st FOB for cash market tons, with the low end reported on a spot basis in Illinois after netbacks. Although sources acknowledged that dealer-to-dealer trades were likely taking place at lower numbers, no actual prices were confirmed for those bartered tons. Several sources noted that dealers had some room to play with, as spring prepay business fell in an incredibly broad range of $495-$665/st FOB, depending on when the tons were booked.
Western Cornbelt: Most of the region remained mired in wet weather and muddy or flooded field conditions last week. “I’m not ready to slit my wrists yet, but it’s getting close,” said one Iowa source, who noted that things “can’t get any wetter and we haven’t done a thing yet.”
Sources reported some dealer-to-dealer trades taking place for anhydrous ammonia, with some reasoning that their preplant ammonia season would be compressed. “It’s not a lot of tons, but it’s out there,” said one, quoting sales in the $630s/st FOB range on a spot basis. The upper end of the range remained at the $675/st FOB level for spot pricing from producers, with one source reporting fall prepay at the $720/st FOB level in the region.
Southern Plains: The ammonia market was steady at $570-$590/st FOB for spot tons, with the low out of regional production points and the upper end to dealers FOB pipeline terminals in Kansas. The region continued to battle wet weather and sloppy field conditions. The weather delays have had “no good effect” on fieldwork and spring planting in the region, as one source put it. While several sources said most of the wheat topdressing had been done, nitrogen rates were curtailed because of the conditions.
Not much corn has been planted in the region, but growers aren’t giving up yet. “Ideally we’d like to have corn in the ground by now,” said a Kansas dealer. “People talk about planting more soybeans, but I don’t know where they’ll find the seed. We’re adding a lot of soybean acres to begin with, and if they’re now talking about more, I’m not sure how that will happen.”
South Central: The anhydrous ammonia cash market remained at $610-$640/st FOB regional terminals to the dealer, with the low FOB Memphis. Fall prepay tons out of the Memphis location were quoted at the $670/st FOB mark in early April.
Heavy rains and flooding conditions continued to batter much of the region, particularly Arkansas.
Black Sea: Reports of bad weather last week delayed some shipments. Once that cleared up, however, vessels were loaded and material sent to mostly European customers. Asian sources report the price edging back into the