SINGAPORE: ADNOC's price cut for flagship Murban has given the grade a boost in Asia as a cargo may have been sold to Thailand early in the trading cycle for March-loading Middle East crude, traders said on Monday.
The cargo was likely sold by a Japanese trader on Dubai basis, they said. Price details remained sketchy although most traders expect the grade to be priced at a premium to its official selling price (OSP).
A trader expects Murban to start trading at a premium of about 20 cents a barrel to OSP.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week joined Kuwait and Iraq in pricing crude they sell to Asia below that of OPEC's top producer Saudi Arabia.
ADNOC set December Murban OSP at a discount to similar quality Saudi's Arab Extra Light for the ninth month in a row, data from Reuters and trade sources showed last week.
Vitol bought most of the 26 Dubai partials from Shell and Unipec on Monday at $45.40 a barrel. Unipec will deliver an Upper Zakum cargo to Vitol following the trades.
OSPs
Iraq's state oil marketer SOMO raised the official February selling price (OSP) for Basra Light crude oil to Asia by $0.30 a barrel to the Oman/Dubai average minus $3.70 a barrel, it said on Sunday.
This puts February Basra Light at a wide discount of 90 cents to Saudi's Arab Medium, same as the price spread in December.
Kuwait set the official selling price (OSP) for its crude oil sales to Asian buyers for February at $3.30 a barrel below the average of Oman/Dubai quotes, a trader said.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for March settled at $45.65 a barrel, down $2.01, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at $2.45 a barrel below Dubai swaps against a discount of $2.50 in the previous session.
MARKET NEWS
Private equity giant Carlyle sees further declines in oil prices before a wave of asset buying that will focus on existing fields rather than exploration projects.
British oil and gas producer Afren Plc slashed its resource estimates for its oilfield in Barda Rash in Iraqi Kurdistan and said it was exploring options for the asset.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh on Sunday as part of a diplomatic tour of OPEC members to discuss falling oil prices, which have hit its economy hard.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc will cut between 5 and 10 percent of the just over 3,000 jobs at its Albian Sands mining project in northern Alberta, a company spokesman said on Friday, although he refrained from connecting the move to plunging oil prices.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.