Supply of North Sea Brent crude to rise in May

LONDON: Supply of Brent crude oil will rise in May to a four-month high, according loading programmes seen by a trading source on Monday.

The May schedule contains six cargoes, each of 600,000 barrels of oil, or a daily supply rate of 116,000 barrels per day, compared with April's schedule that contained four cargoes, or a daily rate of 80,000 bpd.

This is the largest number of cargoes since January.

Brent, together with Forties, Ekofisk and Oseberg, underpins the dated Brent benchmark used to back most of the world's oil trade.