SINGAPORE: August-loading Middle East crude cargoes slipped on Friday into discounts against their respective official selling prices (OSPs) as weak margins battered demand in Asia.
Chinaoil's offers of Upper Zakum at parity to 5 cents above its OSP during the Platts MoC process did not locate a buyer, depressing the grade's differential into a discount, traders said.
"There are quite a few sellers for Upper Zakum," a trader said.
Cash Dubai stayed at a discount to swaps for a second session after Mercuria sold an August Dubai partial to Shell at $44.44 a barrel.
A rise in light crude supplies from top exporter Saudi Arabia depressed differentials for similar quality Abu Dhabi grades.
Murban was traded at 5-10 cents below its OSP on Friday, traders said.
Weakness in the value for competing grade Russian ESPO also weighed on the market.
Trafigura sold two ESPO cargoes loading on Aug. 1-5 and 6-11 at premiums of $2 and $2.25 a barrel, respectively, to Dubai quotes. Buyers were not immediately known.
Tasweeq has awarded its Al-Shaheen tender at parity to 20 cents a barrel above Dubai quotes, traders said, although details remained sketchy.
China ordered at least 255 Shanghai-based industrial facilities to fully or partially shut down for 14 days in a bid to reduce pollution ahead of the G20 summit, according to an official document reviewed by Reuters on Friday.
Shanghai Petrochemical Corp, a subsidiary of state refiner Sinopec Corp, will reduce its capacity by 50 percent, or about 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), for the event during those two weeks, the document said.
An official with Sinopec's Jinling Petrochemical Corp, another major refinery based in the city of Nanjing in neighbouring Jiangsu province, said his firm was also asked by local authorities to "appropriately reduce throughput", but was not given any specific size of reductions.
China granted independent refiner Wudi Xinyue Ran Hua Co a final 2.4 million tonnes oil import quota, the state planner said on Friday.
Global oil majors Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are putting small refineries on the auction block as they look to trim lower-margin assets in the face of headwinds from rising crude oil prices.
Venezuelan oil minister Eulogio del Pino said on Thursday fellow OPEC member Iran would reach pre-sanction oil output levels by September, allowing a revival of talks on a global oil production freeze.
Freight rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs), which hit multi-month lows this week on reduced tanker demand, could fall further before recovering towards the end of this month, ship brokers said.
Russia's Sakhalin Energy has called a tender to build a third production line at the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on Russia's Sakhalin island in the Pacific, the company said on Thursday.
Global oil company chiefs showed up in force to Russia's main investor show on Thursday, but deals were slow to materialise as they blamed low crude prices for cutting their scope to invest.
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