Sunflower oil is falling in price amid falling prices for palm and soybean oil

Oil prices fell slightly yesterday after earlier speculative gains, despite Iran's shelling of Israel on Saturday, as the latter has not yet responded to the attack, and therefore the conflict has not escalated into open military confrontation.

Brent June futures on London's ICE Futures exchange rose 0.8% to $90.45/barrel on Friday and fell 0.34% to $90.14/barrel on Monday (-0, 5% per week, +4.5% per month).

Oil prices were followed by palm oil and soybean oil quotes, especially as a report from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board turned out to be more upbeat than traders expected, adding pressure on quotes.

According to the report, Malaysia in March compared to February increased crude palm oil production by 10.57% to 1.39 million tons and exports by 28.61% to 1.32 million tons, as a result of which stocks decreased by 10, 68% to the 10-month low of 1.71 million tons.

June palm oil futures on Bursa Malaysia yesterday fell 1.86% to 4,204 ringgit/t or $880/t (-2.2% for the week).

For April 1-15, the export of palm oil from Malaysia increased in comparison with the same period in March by 9.2% to 633.7 thousand tons according to the estimates of the surveyor Intertek Testing Services and by 28.5% to 697.45 thousand tons according to the data of the surveyor Amspec Agri Malaysia. After the end of Ramadan, oil production will increase.

In an April report, the USDA raised its forecast for global production of vegetable oils from 222.85 to 223.17 million tons (217.88 million tons in FY 2022/23), and lowered its forecast for palm oil imports to India and China by 0.2 million tons to 9 and 6 million tons, respectively, and its export from Indonesia by 0.35 to 27.35 million tons.

May futures for soybean oil in Chicago for the week fell by 5.2% to $1,002/t (-7.2% for the month) against the background of increasing offers of cheap soybeans from South America. Quotations were not supported even by data on the increase in soybean processing in the USA.

According to the report of the NOPA association, in March soybean processing in the United States amounted to a record 5.35 million tons, which exceeded analysts' forecasts and by 5.7% - the figure for March 2023. Soybean oil sales grew by 9.5% compared to February to 840 thousand tons, which almost corresponds to the level of March 2023.

According to Trading Economics, for the week the average price of sunflower oil with delivery to buyers decreased by 0.8% to $873/t, and in Ukraine prices fell by $5-10/t to $800-805/t with delivery to ports Black Sea, $840-850/t with delivery to Bulgaria, $880-890/t with delivery to Italy.

Against the backdrop of a decrease in the forecast of palm oil exports, the USDA increased the forecast of sunflower oil exports from Ukraine by 0.15 to 5.9 million tons and the Russian Federation by 0.1 to 4.4 million tons due to an increase in imports by Egypt by 0.25 to 0.6 million t.