The crude oil price has been rising ever since December last year and of course was accelerated by the invasion of Ukraine. Since the invasion, it’s continued to march from $90 barrel all the way up to a peak of $120 a barrel in mid June. Although the price has fluctuated, it’s been following the same linear upward curve, but the trend may have broken. Crude oil cargo trade has followed a very familiar trading pattern, with a 5% fall in February, then in March plus 7% and then a fall back in April, which is what we would expect at this time of year. In fact, this has been the pattern across all the tanker cargos. LNG spiked to 23% and then back to 27% in April. Vegetable Oil trade has also been strong, with people trying to get the last remaining
supplies.
Overall crude oil globally dropped 14 million tonnes in April. The biggest drop was from India which went from 20 million tonnes in March to 13 million. However, Chinese crude imports rose from 38.4 million tonnes to 39.7 million tonnes.