Most importers withdrew from the market, waiting for the international prices to drop and downstream acceptability to recover, said an importer based in Jiangsu, East China.
As Asian refineries marked up contracted prices of base oils by US$10-30/mt, most importers in East China also lifted their offers, he said. Although their offers were lower than the international levels, the prices were still beyond domestic downstream buyers' expectation, the source explained.
Tight supplies of both homemade and exotic resources in the domestic market did not bolster up downstream plants' buying interests this month, introduced another Jiangsu-based source. This was due to low demands from the lackluster lubricant market. In the meantime, most large-scale lubricant blending plants were not in desperate need of new cargoes, as they could rely on their inventories hoarded in July-August when base oils prices were low, further explained the source. These inventories might last for about one month, he predicted.
Moreover, as international crude oil prices hovered low at US$75/mt, Sinopec and PetroChina might cut base oils prices to meet the crude oil benchmarks, opined a source with a large blending plant based in Shandong. On expectation of price-cut, most blending plants stayed on sidelines, he said.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
