SINGAPORE: Middle East crude benchmarks dipped on Friday amid wide discounts for light sour crude from the region.
Light sour Abu Dhabi Das Blend crude traded at a discount of around 30 cents to the grade's official selling price, indicating that market sentiment for light crude remains weak.
Japanese refiner JX bought a Das Blend cargo from BP at around that level this week, trading sources with knowledge of the deal said.
Das Blend had begun trading at discounts between 10-15 cents per barrel to the grade's OSP this month, but an outage at the Ruwais refinery that forced prompt sales of light sour Murban crude dragged values lower.
A flurry of trades, including deals for March and May Dubai partials, were done in the Platts window.
The trading arm of PetroChina bought a total of 14 March Dubai partials, from Shell, Unipec and Reliance, traders said. Unipec bought a total of 16 May Dubai partials from ChinaOil, SK Energy, BP, Mitsui and Mercuria.
The trades mean that Reliance and Unipec will each deliver a cargo of Upper Zakum crude to China Oil in March.
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