Several Asia-US ‘post-Harvey’ tanker bookings cancelled

SINGAPORE / Reuters

Several bookings for oil product tankers from Asia to the United States and Latin America have been cancelled as traders have not been able to find spot supplies to fill them and as demand has tapered off slightly, traders and shipbrokers said on Wednesday.
About one-third of the estimated 25 vessels that were provisionally booked to load 880,000 tonnes of jet fuel, diesel and gasoline from North Asia and Singapore to head to the West Coast of the United States and to countries such as Mexico, Chile and Guam have been cancelled, the sources said. “There was a lot of hype last week and people were reserving vessels without getting the cargoes,” a trader with a US company said. “But it is quite hard to find September-loading spot cargoes,” the trader added. Refiners typically sell their oil product cargoes a month in advance, and the prompt-loading supplies that were needed had already been sold. With some refineries in US beginning to restart operations after Harvey, demand may be waning as well, a Singapore middle distillates trader said.