Singapore — The great disruptor that is US shale oil is coming to Asia, as refiners in the energy-hungry region look to expand and diversify their sources of crude, and the consequences will likely go well beyond a shift in oil trade flows. It should come as no surprise that rising oil output in the US would find its way to the region that is the world’s fastest-growing consumer of the fuel, but perhaps the rapid pace of the shift has caught some in the market off-guard. Crude oil exports to Asia from the US are still relatively small-scale, with Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecasts estimating flows of about 261,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first eight months of the year. However, this is about 10 times what they were in the same period last year. Major buyer China has gone from taking just one cargo of less than 1-million barrels in the January to August period in 2016 to buying about 115,000 bpd from the US so far this year. It’s also likely that US shale oil exports wil...
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