SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market held steady on Monday as traders looked ahead to the al-Shaheen tender to kick start January trade.
Tasweeq will close the tender on Wednesday to sell five cargoes of al-Shaheen with bids valid until Friday, a trader said. The cargoes will load on Jan. 20-21, 23-24 and 26-27 with the remaining two loading on Jan. 29-30.
Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, will supply full contracted volumes of crude oil to at least two Asian term buyers in December, unchanged from November, industry sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.
More official selling prices (OSPs) from crude producers are due this week.
Yemen has set the official selling price of its Masila crude for loading in January at a premium of $0.46 a barrel to dated Brent, down $0.28 from the previous month, its government said on Monday.
News of supply disruptions in Libya boosted Brent futures by more than $1 a barrel on Monday.
Officials said on Sunday that an oil field in southwest Libya has closed down, the third oil facility in the chaotic country to shut within a week.
TENDERS
India's ONGC offered a cargo of Sokol crude for loading on Jan. 13-16 in a tender to close on Nov. 13 with bids valid until a day later.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for January settled at $81.78, up $1.05, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at 71 cents a barrel below Dubai swaps, compared with a discount of 66 cents in the previous session.
MARKET NEWS
OPEC is unlikely to decide to cut its oil output ceiling at its next meeting on Nov. 27, Kuwait's oil minister Ali al-Omair told reporters on Monday.
Tokyo has agreed in principle to allow the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to store crude in Japan for at least three more years, the trade ministry said on Monday, giving the No.2 crude supplier to Japan continued access to a supply depot.
China's crude oil imports in October were 24.09 million, or 5.67 million barrels per day - down 15.5 percent on a daily basis from the previous month but up 18 percent from year ago.
Iraqi Kurdistan has sold 34.5 million barrels of oil worth almost $3 billion since January, the Kurdistan Regional Government said, despite opposition from the federal government to independent oil sales from the region.
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