SINGAPORE: The Asia-Pacific crude market remained under pressure from ample supply, although slightly higher refinery margins and limited arbitrage inflows provided some support.
Chinaoil, the trading arm of PetroChina, bought two October-loading Sokol cargoes, traders said. One was purchased from Itochu at $2.80 a barrel and one from ONGC in a tender, they said. The price for the latter cargo was unclear.
Traders were awaiting the result of a tender by Malaysia's Petronas to sell a cargo of Kikeh crude for October loading. No other Malaysian grades were heard traded.
Vietnam's PV Oil will close a tender on Wednesday to sell two 200,000-barrel cargoes of Thang Long crude.
Asian refining margins improved slightly but remained at least $2 a barrel below the average for the first half of the year, weighing on demand.
"The market will remain long (on) products, which will make recovery in Asian refinery margins slow to materialise," PIRA Energy said in a note.
In Japan, crude oil stocks fell 690,000 barrels to a four-week low of 98.20 million barrels last week, while refinery runs rose to 91.3 percent of capacity from 89.7 percent the previous week, data from the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) showed.
Brent-Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS), or Brent's premium to Dubai swaps, widened 21 cents to $0.98 a barrel.
REFINERY
Malaysia's Petronas plans to shut its 100,000 barrel per day (bpd) No. 1 crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Melaka refinery in the fourth quarter, industry sources said on Wednesday.
India's Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) will shut its 120,000 bpd No. 2 CDU at its refinery in southern Karnataka for about a month from mid-September for planned maintenance, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
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