SINGAPORE: DME Oman slipped back into a discount against Dubai swaps in the Middle East crude market on Tuesday, down from the previous session's two-month high, in the last trading day of the month.
A flurry of trades dominated the Platts window as traders square their positions. Seventeen Dubai partials were traded and Vitol will deliver a December-loading Oman cargo to Shell.
For Oman, SK Energy sold four partials to Shell.
Elsewhere, North Asian refiners have stepped up spot purchases as they diversify their crude supply beyond the Middle East.
The first US export of Alaskan crude to South Korea in more than a decade set sail at the weekend, according to a company source and shipping data, marking another milestone as booming shale oil output forces domestic drillers to seek new customers.
The Suezmax Polar Discovery loaded at the Valdez terminal in Alaska late last week and was due to arrive next week in Yeosu, South Korea, according to shipping data available on Thomson Reuters Eikon.
A source at South Korea's second-biggest refiner GS Caltex Corp said the firm would receive 800,000 barrels of Alaskan crude on October 10 after purchasing the oil on the spot market.
Japan's fourth-largest refiner, Cosmo Oil Co, plans to increase crude purchases in the spot market by up to 5 percent next year, aiming to boost its exposure to a rising supply of cheaper oil from other regions, a senior executive said.
Analysts expect OPEC to cut production. Barclay analysts said the call on OPEC crude to decline by 1.1 million barrels per day from third quarter this year.
"The baseline levels are markedly lower in third quarter 2014 at 29.6 million bpd and 28.5 million bpd in 2015," the bank said.
"This change is much higher than the 0.5 million bpd that El-Badri suggested in recent comments," it said, referring to the OPEC secretary general.
Separately, Asian buyers imported less than 1 million barrels per day of Iranian crude for the first time this year in August as China's buys hit the lowest since the easing of Western sanctions, although intake was still up 6.4 percent from a year ago.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for November settled at $95.89, down 8 cents, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at 15 cents a barrel below Dubai swaps against a premium of 65 cents in the previous session.
The official selling price (OSP) for Oman crude in November will fall by $4.97 to $97.26 a barrel, Reuters calculations based on DME's data showed on Tuesday.
MARKET NEWS
Oil pricing agency Platts plans to lengthen the loading period of North Sea crude cargoes it uses in its dated Brent oil assessment, its latest adjustment to strengthen the global oil benchmark.
Britain's Buzzard oil field in the North Sea is back online and will continue to ramp up production over coming days, a spokeswoman for its operator Nexen, whose parent is China's CNOOC, said on Monday.
West African crude oil exports to Asia are set to fall to 1.72 million barrels per day (bpd) in October from 2.00 million bpd planned for September, a Reuters survey indicated on Monday.
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