SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market held steady on Wednesday amid thin trade due to the holiday season.
Shell bought two February Dubai partials from Chinaoil at $57.40 and $57.30 a barrel, respectively. Trafigura bought an April partial from Shell at $59 a barrel.
For Russian grades, Rosneft sold two of three ESPO cargoes via a tender to JX Nippon and Shell at about $3 a barrel above Dubai quotes, traders said, steady levels compared with an earlier tender by Surgutneftegas. The two cargoes will load on Jan. 31-Feb. 5 and Feb. 2-7. The deals could not be independently verified.
The Feb. 6-11 cargo has been re-tendered, traders said.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for February settled at $58.10 a barrel, up $1.05, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at $1.25 a barrel below Dubai swaps, against a discount of $1.01 in the previous session.
REFINING
Idemitsu Kosan Co said on Wednesday it planned to refine 505,300 barrels per day (7.32 million kilolitres) of crude oil in January-March, down 10 percent from a year earlier, in line with declining domestic demand.
MARKET NEWS
Arab OPEC producers expect global oil prices to rebound to between $70 and $80 a barrel by the end of next year as a global economic recovery revives demand, in the first indication of where the group expects oil markets to stabilise in the medium term.
China's commercial crude oil stocks at the end of November were down 1.83 percent from the previous month, and refined fuel stocks fell 2.4 percent, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.
Iraq's oil exports are rising in December towards a record high, according to loading data and industry sources, as OPEC's second-largest producer pumps more despite oil prices trading near a five-year low.
Russia's oil exports are expected to fall by 4.3 percent this year, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday, citing preliminary data.
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