SINGAPORE: The Asia-Pacific crude market held steady on Wednesday after ConocoPhillips sold Kimanis close to the level of a previous trade.
The US explorer sold a Kimanis cargo at about $3.60 a barrel above dated Brent, similar to a previous sale by Petroleum Brunei, traders said.
Petronas' decision to keep Tapis, Kikeh and Labuan for domestic use has so far helped support premiums for Malaysian grades. But its offer of a Bunga Kekwa cargo late in the month has added prompt supply to the market.
The Malaysian state oil firm will sell a 300,000-barrel Bunga Kekwa cargo loading on May 3-9 in a tender to close on Friday.
A trader said the market remained oversupplied and spot premiums were expected to slide on lower refining margins and peak maintenance.
Indonesia's state-owned Pertamina is seeking up to 3 million barrels of crude for delivery in July, a company official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Brent's premium to Dubai swaps, or Brent-Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS), narrowed 29 cents to $2.85 a barrel on Wednesday on ample North Sea crude supplies.
MARKET NEWS
Kuwait has agreed with neighbour Saudi Arabia to resume oil production at the jointly operated Khafji field, the OPEC member state's acting oil minister said on Tuesday, weeks before oil producers are expected to agree a global output freeze.
India's crude imports rose in February with Reliance importing 13.7 percent more oil than in January. Essar Oil, the top Indian buyer of Iranian crude, raised imports from Tehran by about two-thirds in February compared with the previous month.
Japan's commercial crude stocks fell 1.12 million barrels to 89.78 million barrels in the week to March 26, data released by the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ) showed.
Latin American oil producers Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico may meet on April 8 to prepare an output freeze proposal for an April 17 meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC countries, Ecuador's oil minister said on Tuesday.
Rosneft is set to lower oil output, Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi said on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of leading global oil producers in Doha on April 17 to discuss an output freeze to support weak oil prices.
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