China’s Fuel Exports Rise as India’s Slow Down

One of the dominant themes in Asia’s oil products markets is the rise of Chinese fuel exports, so much so that the decline in shipments from India barely gets mentioned.

India has in recent years been a fairly major player in Asia’s market for refined products, given the presence of plants designed to take advantage of the country’s location between producers in the Middle East and consumers in the rest of Asia.

India’s Reliance Industries, the owner of the world’s biggest refining complex, operates the 1.2 million-barrels-per-day (bpd) Jamnagar refining complex, while Essar Oil has a 400,000-bpd plant at Vadinar, both of which are focused on supplying overseas markets.

But changing dynamics of the local fuel market mean selling fuel at home has become as profitable as shipping it out.

India has largely deregulated its fuel market, ending the subsidies on gasoline and diesel that made it difficult for private refiners like Reliance and Essar to compete with state-owned companies, which were often forced to run at losses.

A robust rise in domestic demand, versus a slower increase in the rest of Asia, also means a growing market in which to participate.

Domestic sales of all oil products in India were at 15.84 million tonnes in December, equivalent to about 4.09 million bpd, and up 8.2 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to calculations based on official data.

via Reuters

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza