- Newsflow for this week was in respect of the delay in the rollout of B5 in the northern states of Peninsular Malaysia and palm oil shipments figures for the month of September.

- Bloomberg quoted Platts as saying that the implementation of B5 in the northern states of Malaysia has been delayed from October to end-December 2013 or January 2014. Platts is an energy news provider.

- An industry player said that petroleum companies had been facing problems getting approvals from the local councils to build terminals.

- Nevertheless, according to the report, the petroleum companies are preparing to rollout the mandate. The companies are looking at tanker supply and safety procedures.

- Usage of biodiesel in the northern region is expected to be less than 50,000 tonnes per annum.

- Recall that B5 is supposed to be fully implemented by July 2014. B5 is expected to be rolled out in the eastern states of Peninsular Malaysia from January 2014 onwards before being implemented in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan in July 2014.

- Independent cargo surveyors reported that palm oil shipments from Malaysia inched up by 1.0% to 2.1% MoM in September 2013.

- Shipments to Pakistan and USA expanded between 21% and 50% in September, which partly compensated for a 24.7% MoM fall in shipments to China.

- Based on an export growth of 1%, CPO production increase of 5% and domestic disappearance of 240,000 tonnes, palm oil inventory in Malaysia could amount to 1.71mil tonnes in September.

- In comparison, palm oil inventory was 1.67mil tonnes in August.

- We expect palm oil production in Malaysia to peak in October before softening at the end of the year or early next year.

- For the full year, industry experts have forecasted Malaysia’s palm oil production to be 19mil tonnes (2012: 18.8mil tonnes). From January to August, palm oil output amounted to 10.2mil tonnes.

Source: AmeSecurities