Diesel margins climb on more buying

Northwest European diesel barge margins rose by 81 cents to just under $17 a barrel on Monday, supported by rising activity, but rising imports limited further gains.

• In the Northwest European diesel barge window, over 28,000 metric tons of barges traded on Monday, sharply higher than the previous session's 12,500 tons.

• Shell and Unipec sold to BP, TotalEnergies, Vitol, Gunvor and Hartree.

• European diesel margins are coming under pressure from high imports and lacklustre demand.

• As much as 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of diesel and gasoil is due to arrive from east of Suez to the Atlantic Basin in April, according to Vortexa. That is up from 900,000 bpd in March.

• "The rising flows are partly due to higher flows from Saudi Arabia and India, both historically large suppliers to Europe," said Jay Maroo, head of market intelligence and analysis at Vortexa.

• The Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar region has been forced to suspend some operations after being damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack, the state TASS news agency cited an executive overseeing the plant as saying on Saturday.