Bunker pricing hits seasonal high as monsoon cuts deep-water berth throughput

The cost of bunker fuel at Nueva Singapur's deep-water terminal breached 780 florins per tonne on Wednesday, the highest daily settlement since November, as the monsoon's gale-force winds disrupted refuelling schedules and cut berth throughput by an estimated 14 percent over the past week.

The Port Authority of Nueva Singapur recorded 42 vessel turnarounds in the 24 hours to 18:00 local time, down from a July daily average of 49. The shortfall has pushed queue times at the outer anchorage to 11 hours, the longest since the March maintenance window.

"Every bunkering barge that can work is working, but when the wind is above 35 knots we cannot put a line across," said Henrik Larsen, the bureau's standing deep-water-port correspondent, citing a port operations memo. "The refinery feedstock pipeline is running at capacity; the constraint is the weather window, not the product."