Tampa: For whatever reason, speculation was holding last week that the price of molten sulfur to Tampa will drop for the third quarter, which officially begins July 1.
As a result, the question was not whether it would go up or down, but how much would it drop? The range cited by traders, rather than oil companies or the phosphate industry, was $10/lt on the low side to $30/lt or more on the high side.
Possible reasons included the high refining rates, which were more than 90 percent of capacity, and Syncrude’s remelting project in Alberta. Regardless, most agree an oversupply exists, but few could agree on how much.
The Department of Energy reported that the refinery operating capacity rate actually decreased last week by 0.1 percent, from 92 percent to 91.9 percent, which was pretty minimal. Even using more sweet crude, the amount of sulfur extracted from the oil was on the increase.
U.S. Gulf: Prill prices exported from the Gulf of Mexico were said to be in the $180/mt range last week.
Vancouver: Prices in China were down about $10-$15/mt, which will not be a spark for Vancouver sulfur exports.
West Coast: Prices were in the same range as sulfur shipped from Vancouver.
Benelux: The current price range was $210-$228/mt FOB.