The evening snapshot at 21:13 puts fuel oil at 4,685 yuan/tonne, up 0.77%, while bitumen prints 4,574 yuan/tonne, up 2.81%. The morning told a different story — bitumen led to the downside on inventory builds, fuel oil led on restocking. By the close the two swapped roles: bitumen erased its loss and added more, fuel oil went flat.

The flip is refiners arbitraging two outlets for vacuum residue. Bonded bunker blending restocking had front-run demand; road bitumen, entering the tail of Q4 rush construction, saw traders cover shorts. The gap between coking feed and blending feed recovered from negative to roughly 40–60 yuan per tonne of marginal contribution, and independents re-split residue between cokers and bunker tanks.

For SNSUC's delivered-to-China transfer pricing, the heavy barrel is not the lead actor, but its spread drags on refiner run rates and on bonded bunker premia. Fuel oil capped at 0.77% implies the Singapore 180CST delivered discount stopped climbing and Zhoushan's urgency to grab vessels eased; bitumen's rebound flags road demand was undercounted and, if sustained, will divert residue that could have fed bunkers.