The split was clean today: bitumen front-month at 5,098 yuan/t (-4.39%) fell far harder than crude, while low-sulphur fuel oil at 4,253 yuan/t (+0.64%) closed in the green. Same vacuum-resid from one crude unit - on one side coke-feed demand is soft with high stocks, on the other steady bunker and deep-processing demand holds the floor.

The resid allocation logic at independents is shifting: as bitumen economics turn negative, more vacuum resid is routed to coking and delayed-coker units, lifting petroleum coke and gas-oil output. That explains why coke stocks (already reported at 87.3% yesterday) remain at the high end of the range and coke-feed off-take stays thin.

Operating note: the bitumen-fuel oil gap has opened to roughly 5 percentage points. A long-fuel-oil / short-bitumen crack hedge carries 2-3 USD/t of carry in the current structure, but watch winter road works winding down, which will press bitumen further.