SINGAPORE: The Asia-Pacific crude market held steady on Wednesday as traders await tender results from PTT and Pertamina to gauge demand and price direction for November-loading cargoes trading this month.
PTT closed a monthly tender to buy sweet crude for Nov. 1-5 delivery on Tuesday with offers remaining valid until late Wednesday.
Pertamina has offered 600,000 barrels of Saharan Blend for loading on Oct. 20-25 in a tender that will close on Thursday with bids valid until Friday.
The producer has put a new clause in the tender stating that the cargo cannot be re-sold, a trader said.
Looking ahead to demand for November cargoes, Asian refiners have said they will look for a sustained recovery in margins before raising output. Complex refining margins in Singapore have risen to about $6 a barrel on Wednesday, up from an average of $3.66 in August.
News of an impending restart of the North Sea's Buzzard oilfield narrowed Brent's premium to Dubai swaps. Brent-Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS) was at $1.10 a barrel for October, down 28 cents.
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Flagship Chinese oil producers are preparing to ramp up multi-billion dollar capital spending plans squeezed amid a Beijing probe into industry graft, offering a lift for oil services firms that suffered from belt-tightening in the first half.
U.S. policymakers should gradually lift the country's decades-old ban on crude oil exports because allowing the shipments would make the global energy system and fuel prices more stable, the head of Royal Dutch Shell Plc said.
Indonesia's powerful anti-corruption agency on Wednesday named the energy and mineral resources minister as a suspect in a graft case involving the extortion of state funds.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday pushed Rafael Ramirez from his twin posts as oil minister and a chief of state oil firm PDVSA in a cabinet shake-up that opposition critics said fell short of the overhaul needed to reverse the OPEC nation's economic decline.
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