SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude benchmark Dubai firmed on Thursday, shored up by Shell's purchases during the Platts MoC process.
The deals led Reliance to deliver an Upper Zakum cargo to Shell, traders said.
April spot premium for Upper Zakum softened after Taiwanese refiner CPC bought a cargo at a lower premium.
CPC bought an April-loading cargo likely from Unipec at 70-80 cents a barrel above its OSP, they said. This was down from an earlier deal at a premium of above 90 cents a barrel in a cargo sold by Vitol, traders said.
Indian Oil Corp is expected to award by end-Thursday a sour crude buy tender for March and April.
Robust Chinese demand for Russian ESPO underpinned April premiums. Trafigura sold a cargo for April 1-10 loading likely to Unipec at $5.20-$5.30 a barrel above Dubai quotes, traders said. Tenergy also sold a cargo last week, likely at a premium of about $5.10 a barrel to China.
SK Energy has been the highest bidder for ESPO so far as it paid a premium of $5.60 a barrel for and April 1-6 cargo in Surgutneftegaz' tender last week.
BP swept up 1.5 million barrels of Qatari condensate loading in April, a rare move for the oil major, three traders who participate in the market said.
The company bought two 500,000-barrel cargoes of deodorised field condensate (DFC) from Qatar's state oil marketer Tasweeq in a tender and another similar-sized cargo before that, they said.
The cargoes were priced between $3.50 and $3.90 a barrel above Dubai quotes, the traders said.
It was not immediately clear where BP intends to re-sell the cargoes, but the traders said they may head out of Asia as there is no demand here.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for April settled at $30.51 a barrel, up $0.81, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at 30 cents a barrel below Dubai swaps, up from a discount of 35 cents in the previous session.
The Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME) said it will change the way it calculates the front-month Oman futures marker price with effect from the last day of trade this month.
MARKET NEWS
Oil refiners are set to enjoy another year of robust profits as feedstock prices remain low, but new plants and slower global growth mean 2016 will not be a boom year.
Strong demand should start to cut into an oil glut around the end of this year, even as new Iranian supplies enter the market and doubts persist over whether major oil producers will reduce output, BP's chief economist said on Wednesday.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.