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Tampa molten contract history

Tampa molten sulfur contracts are the most cited public US domestic benchmark for liquid sulfur delivered into Florida phosphate. Settlements are quarterly. USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries summarize the path each year; trade press such as Argus reports individual quarter settlements when they make news. 2021 established the post-pandemic climb. USGS MCS 2022 stated contracts began the year around $69 per long ton, moved higher through summer, and held near $183/lt for third and fourth quarters. High prices that year were attributed to supply issues after refining disruption, after refining disruption. 2022 was the spike year. USGS MCS 2023 recorded a start near $282/lt, a rise to $481/lt in early April, a mid-year retreat to $352/lt in mid-July, and a fourth-quarter settlement at $90/lt. BC Insight described the Q4 drop of $262/lt to $90/lt as the lowest since Q4 2020, linking it to higher US production and weaker processed-phosphate demand. The April $481/lt print sits next to Vancouver’s ~$478/t FOB solid peak as the dual crest of the global spike. 2023-24 returned to soft territory. Open early-2024 notes placed Q1 2024 Tampa at $69/lt after soft late-2023 levels. USGS MCS 2025 traced 2024 from $69/lt at the start, $81/lt in early March, $76/lt in early July, and $116/lt in the fourth quarter. The year showed a gentle H2 firming without 2022-style volatility. US production and shipments in 2024 were each estimated about 5% below 2023. 2025 continued the firming that set up inventory draws in Canada and stronger seaborne interest, though the standout public Tampa record prints arrived in 2026. Argus reported Q2 2026 already above the prior 2008 peak, then Q3 2026 at $705/lt delivered, up $50/lt from $655/lt in Q2. That record settlement coexisted with much higher spot export ideas from the US Gulf while Middle East flows were constrained. Argus also noted that some Gulf producers lack solid-export infrastructure and remain tied to domestic molten consumers, so phosphate affordability risk feeds directly back into storage tanks. Contract versus spot basis matters for interpretation. Tampa quarterly delivered molten serves Florida acid and phosphate plants under a domestic logistics system. FOB Vancouver and FOB US Gulf granular are export solids with ocean freight. During the 2026 shock, spot export values sat well above the Tampa contract in Argus’s telling, while the contract itself still made a new high. Affordability concerns for fertilizer limited how far the quarterly contract chased spot.

UNCERTAIN: full quarter-by-quarter Tampa prints for every 2023 and 2025 quarter in open USGS prose; some years are summarized as paths across the year. Weekly PRA Tampa and US Gulf series stay behind commercial licenses. Tampa settlements are quarterly delivered molten prices into a concentrated Florida phosphate market. They embed domestic logistics and buyer-seller bargaining under affordability constraints that can keep the contract below contemporaneous spot export ideas, as Argus described in 2026. Those settlements reflect a domestic liquid market with storage and production-rate feedbacks. USGS annual summaries translate those settlements into a public time path. Comparing Tampa to Vancouver or Middle East FOB without form and freight adjustments produces false precision. A $481/lt Tampa print and a $478/t Vancouver FOB print in 2022 were psychologically aligned peaks, not identical netbacks. A $705/lt Tampa print in Q3 2026 coexisted with much higher spot export notions from the US Gulf and extreme CFR Asia ideas. For five-year charts on Sulfur Wire, plot Tampa as its own series, annotate USGS and Argus sources, and avoid splicing licensed weekly assessments into the public corpus.

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