SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market strengthened further on Friday on strong demand after Taiwan's Formosa bought one very large crude carrier (VLCC) of Iraqi Basra Light crude, soaking up a large part of the remaining December-loading cargoes.
Formosa is said to have paid slight premiums to the crude official selling price (OSP) for the 2 million barrels. Details on the seller were not immediately available.
With the latest award, Formosa has bought a total of 4 million barrels of Basra Light for December, according to Reuters data. The refiner may have paid a slight discount to Basra's OSP for the 2 million barrels it had bought earlier.
In addition to Basra, Formosa has bought 1 million barrels of Oman and 730,000 barrels of Russian ESPO crude for December via tenders.
Formosa has bought higher-than-average volumes for December after skipping spot purchases via tenders for November at least, Reuters data shows.
The Taiwanese refiner may also be buying more to take advantage of a relatively weaker December market to lock up supplies to meet demand during the Chinese New Year, which is in end-January, early-February next year.
Earlier in the month, most Middle Eastern grades had traded at deep discounts versus a month earlier as most refiners had met their peak seasonal demand, with plant outages in Japan further weighing on the market. While values subsequently recovered, they still remained lower than a month earlier.
TENDERS
- Russia's Surgut sold three cargoes of 730,000 barrels each of ESPO for December loading to JX, Shell and Unipec at between $4.85 and $5.1 a barrel above Dubai.
- India's state-run ONGC issued a tender to sell 700,000 barrels of Russian Sokol crude. The tender closes on Nov. 6, with bids remaining valid till a day earlier.
DME OMAN
- DME Oman for January settled at $107.25, up 32 cents, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at $2.71 a barrel above Dubai swaps, up from a premium of $2.55 in the previous session.
MARKET NEWS
- Global spare crude oil production capacity rose slightly in September and October as Saudi Arabia trimmed output on lower power plant demand, the US government said.
- Libya's efforts to end an oil crisis that has reduced its exports to a trickle faltered after oil workers appeared to shrug off a 67 percent pay increase and a deal to reopen the eastern Hariga terminal looked close to collapse.
- Big Oil is poised to spend over $25 billion next year to boost output from Iraq's giant oilfields towards record rates, Iraq's deputy prime minister for energy said, even as Baghdad struggles to control spillover from the civil war in Syria.
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