Tampa: By late last week, Mosaic had reached an agreement with its suppliers for a price reduction for the third quarter for molten sulfur delivered to Tampa. The drop was $10/lt, which lowered the price from $180/lt to $170/lt.
However, PotashCorp was still in the process of negotiating its price, so the Green Markets range will not change until that company has reached an agreement with all of its sulfur suppliers as well.
PotashCorp had resumed production of MAP at its White Springs processing plant, but had not reached normal production levels as of late last week. That was expected to occur sometime this week. The plant went offline due to flooding and a power loss during Tropical Storm Debby.
Refinery operating capacity remained very high last week, according to the Department of Energy. The operating rate was down 0.7 percent, from 92.7 percent to 92 percent. The four-year average was 90.2 percent, compared with 90.3 percent for the same week last year.
Vancouver: Syncrude will probably not begin remelting its 9 million mt of blocked sulfur for another couple of months, and it will most likely not do so at maximum capacity of 1,000 mt/day. The rate will probably be closer to120 mt/day.
However, a source said the company will be adding to the block at the same time it will be melting part of the old block, and it will be used to keep a steady flow, if and when the processing plant shuts down, which happened several times during the past year. It was not expected to affect prices for sulfur on either the world market or at Tampa.
Benelux: The current price range was $212-$220/mt FOB.