Bitumen demand during pandemic increased!

When demand rises from the ashes of a pandemic, you’d expect both the price of a commodity and freight rates for ships that move it to rise sharply. Bitumen has dutifully followed the first expectation but rebelled against the second.
The Argus fob Mediterranean bitumen price index plunged to a low of just under $90/t fob basis Augusta in late April, but has since shot up to more than $245/t as refinery run cuts mean supply remains tight even as the summer construction season comes out of lockdown. In key north African markets such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, the end of Ramadan in late May has added to a sense of demand resurgence.
So why hasn’t the standard 5,000 deadweight tonne (dwt) Mediterranean bitumen tanker market responded in kind — in similar fashion to prices for the road paving product? After a lively start to the year, cross-Mediterranean tanker freight rates for 5,000t cargoes from Augusta, Sicily, to Mohammedia, Morocco, jumped to around $55/t at the beginning of March from $40-45/t in early January, helped along by the costly switch away from high-sulphur bunker fuels to meet IMO 2020 requirements.
While rates on that route have since plunged to $36-40/t, rates from Greek ports to Alexandria, Egypt, have fallen much more dramatically, from around $40/t in early March to $26-29/t now. That has been despite an extended halt to Egyptian state-owned EGPC’s 115,000 b/d El-Mex refinery in Alexandria and a steady stream of current and planned cargo imports into the firm’s terminal there.