In a bid to become one of the leading global energy trading hubs, Fujairah Oil Industry Zone in the United Arab Emirates launched on Wednesday a weekly release of oil inventory data.
Fujairah is home to the largest commercial storage capacity for refined products in the Middle East, S&P Global Platts - which helps provide the data - said.
Data about the inventories will include light distillates, middle distillates, and heavy distillates and residues, and will be representative of stock levels as of the Monday of the week of publication.
As of January 16, light distillates at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone were 4.338 million barrels, middle distillates were 4.612 million barrels, and heavy distillates and residues came in at 10.357 million barrels.
"Fujairah's strategic geographic position at the heart of the growing energy corridor east of the Suez Canal to Asia and Africa, as well as its world-class bunkering and oil products storage, heralds the emirate's dawn as a global energy hub," Sheikh Dr. Rashid bin Hamad Al Sharqi, Deputy Chairman of the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, said in the statement.
Last year, the UAE started publishing weekly inventory data for the Fujairah port in a bid to enhance transparency and help turn the Indian Ocean port into an international oil hub such as Singapore and Rotterdam.
Platts started publishing price assessments oil products for the Middle East market on a Free-On-Board Fujairah (FOB FUJ) basis on October 3, 2016.
The Port of Fujairah, which started operating in 1983, had a throughput capacity of 56 million tons of oil products as of 2015. It is the UAE's only Indian Ocean port with the capability to export oil and oil products, and it launched in September 2016 the first Very Large Crude Carrier jetty in the country, capable of handling up to two million barrels of crude and fuels per vessel.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More