The 20:01 snapshot lays out the day's internal split cleanly: at the crude end Brent at 97.693 and WTI at 90.689 both bounced, but the downstream complex did not follow. Bitumen at 5,013 yuan per tonne fell 3.5%, the steepest drop among the eleven quotes; fuel oil at 4,434 inched up just 0.36% and essentially flatlined.

The rubber complex moved the other way. Natural rubber at 20,095 yuan per tonne gained 5.54%; butadiene rubber at 16,000 added 3.96%. One is tire-driven demand, the other supported by tight butadiene, and buying on both sides pushed prices up.

Put those three groups together and the refiner's margin sheet has to be redrawn: bitumen loses, fuel oil breaks even, rubbers pay. With runs ticking back up after the maintenance season, every tonne of residual oil routed to bonded bunker, recycled into bitumen, or sent to coking directly rewrites the day's blended profit.

For SNSUC's arbitrage book, this divergence means the seven-grade delivered cost can no longer be modeled on "crude moves one way." Road demand is weak, tire demand is firm, and the downstream spread matters more than crude's own wiggle.