The most striking move on the board today: Brent and WTI both fell, yet domestic downstream went the other way across the board. Fuel oil front month at ¥4,363/t, up 6.00%; bitumen at ¥5,256/t, up 5.35%; natural rubber at ¥19,600/t, up 2.51%; butadiene rubber at ¥15,680/t, up 5.73%. Crude down, products up — the refinery crack spread widened passively.

The fuel oil leg is not a demand story; it is floating storage in Singapore and Rotterdam drawing down. High-sulphur fuel oil, pulled by scrubber-fitted vessel bunkering, has run an Asian deficit since August, and today's +6% prices in a one-off catch-up for vessel scheduling mismatches. Bitumen reflects a seasonal infrastructure bid plus falling independent-refiner run rates, leaving thin inventories and firm offer intentions.

The two rubber lines must be read separately. Natural rubber tracks producing-region weather and warehouse receipt cancellation; its +2.51% is mild. Butadiene rubber at +5.73% is sharper, rooted in tight butadiene feedstock — upstream ethylene cracker maintenance cut butadiene supply and pushed the cost base up directly. This is cost-push, not demand-pull.

The operational takeaway for SNSUC is concrete: a crude pullback lowers the pledged valuation of bonded crude receipts, but the downstream strength lifts the present value of fuel oil, bitumen and rubber receipts. Within the same book, financing lines can shift from crude receipts toward downstream grades, and cash-and-carry margin requirements get lighter. A crack-decoupling window like this usually lasts one to three weeks; miss it and you wait for the next dislocation.