Fujairah's commercial stocks of refined oil products rose 7.9 percent to 17.278 million barrels in the week to Monday, having sunk to a near nine-month low the previous week, as a number of gasoline cargoes arrived at the port, according to data from the Fujairah Energy Data Committee, FEDCom.

The overall rise was largely due to an increase in light distillates, which rose by 25.6 percent week on week to 5.72 million barrels.

The gasoline market is bullish East of Suez, while a closed arbitrage to the US is likely to make more European gasoline available to the Middle East, according to Platts Analytics.

While light distillate stocks jumped, stocks of middle distillates fell back 2.5 percent to 2.884 million barrels, and staying below 3 million barrels for a fifth week in a row. This is after rising nearly 20 percent last week.

The latest drop comes as Europe continued to draw in gasoil volumes from India and the Middle East on an open arbitrage. The east-west gasoil exchange of futures for swaps fell to a two-week low of minus US$27.34/mt on Wednesday, mainly on a renewed tightening in the European market.

According to the latest data from PJK International, gasoil stocks in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub were at their lowest so far this year and 16 percent lower than a year earlier. This has not attracted US distillates across the Atlantic however, despite rising US production, with US producers preferring to cater to strong demand from Latin America.

Stocks of heavy distillates and residues in Fujairah edged up 2 percent to 8.674 million barrels, but this is still well below the average of 10.49 million barrels since the start of the year after large draws in recent weeks.

Bunker demand has been reported as healthy, and this is expected to be supported by a seasonal rise in global refining this quarter, prompting a rise in regional crude and product tanker traffic.

The government of Fujairah said last year it planned to publish weekly data on aggregate oil product volume held in onshore commercial terminals at the Port of Fujairah as part of its efforts to position the Indian Ocean port city as a global oil trading and storage hub. It appointed S&P Global Platts to distribute the weekly inventory data.

FEDCom was established by the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone to collect, verify and distribute inventory data to replicate the data sets provided at other global trading centers such as Singapore and Rotterdam.

Fujairah has about 41.5 million barrels of commercial oil product land storage available for leasing, Platts Analytics estimates.

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