SINGAPORE: The Asia-Pacific crude market continued to draw support from robust refinery demand even as some prepare for peak maintenance season.
Complex refining margins in the Singapore hub have averaged more than $9 a barrel this month.
Russia's Rosneft sold a cargo of May loading Sokol crude in a tender at about $4.70-$4.90 a barrel above Dubai quotes, a trader said, higher than the previous month. The buyer was not known, and the deal could not be verified.
Rosneft issued a new tender for one or two Sokol cargoes that had initially been offered in a tender last week.
Malaysia's Kimanis was traded around $4 per barrel premium to dated Brent, in line or slightly stronger than last month, traders said.
A major earthquake with a magnitude 7.7 struck off Papua New Guinea on Monday, official monitors said, and a tsunami warning was issued soon after.
Brent-Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS), or Brent's premium to Dubai swaps, narrowed 11 cents to $1.51 a barrel.
REFINERY
Brazil's state oil company Petrobras has decided to shut its 100,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Nishihara refinery on the Japanese island of Okinawa, it said on Saturday.
Japanese oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co said on Monday it would reduce the capacity of the sole crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Chiba refinery by 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 200,000 bpd.
MARKET NEWS
Libya's oil production is currently 564,000 barrels per day, a spokesman for the National Oil Corp (NOC) of Libya said.
U.S. energy giant Chevron sold its entire stake in refiner Caltex Australia Ltd for A$4.7 billion ($3.7 billion) in Asia's biggest block deal this year, as falling oil prices and high costs hurt margins.
Pumping was halted on Monday on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline between Iraq and Turkey's Mediterranean coast due to technical reasons, a shipping source said.
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