SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market strengthened after poor weather delayed loadings at Iraq's southern terminal, traders said on Monday.
Tankers have waited to load Iraqi Basra Light for several weeks, creating tightness in the market, traders said. Last month, poor weather also caused delays to shipments from Iraq.
Spot premiums for Iraqi Basra Light were likely to have improved in a tender by Indian Oil Corp (IOC) seeking 2 million barrels of the grade loading in May, although the details of the tender were not clear.
India's Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) last week bought 1 million barrels of Basra Light from Total at about 30 cents a barrel above its official selling price (OSP).
The passage of Kuwait oil tankers off the coast of Yemen has not been affected by military operations there, a spokesman for Kuwait Petroleum Corp was quoted as saying by state news agency KUNA on Sunday.
Trafigura will receive four cargoes of ESPO crude from Rosneft in May, up from two in April, as the trading house expands its deal with the sanction-hit Russian state company, market sources said.
Trafigura will lift up to 1.6 million tonnes of crude from Rosneft in April from the Baltic, the Mediterranean and Pacific ports, about 38 percent of Rosneft's exports.
Rosneft sold a cargo of May loading Sokol crude in a tender at around $4.70-$4.90 a barrel above Dubai quotes, traders said, higher than the previous month.
REFINERY
Brazil's state oil company Petrobras has decided to shut its 100,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Nishihara refinery on the Japanese island of Okinawa, it said on Saturday.
Japanese oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co said on Monday it would reduce the capacity of the sole crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Chiba refinery by 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 200,000 bpd.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for May settled at $53.95 a barrel, down $1.60, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at 87 cents a barrel below Dubai swaps, compared with a discount of 85 cents in the previous session.
MARKET NEWS
Libya's oil production is currently 564,000 barrels per day, a spokesman for the National Oil Corp (NOC) of Libya said.
US energy giant Chevron sold its entire stake in refiner Caltex Australia Ltd for A$4.7 billion ($3.7 billion) in Asia's biggest block deal this year, as falling oil prices and high costs hurt margins.
Pumping was halted on Monday on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline between Iraq and Turkey's Mediterranean coast due to technical reasons, a shipping source said.
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