LONDON: Forties crude oil differentials held unchanged on Tuesday, a lack of new supertanker fixtures for prompt loading outweighing the prospect of disruption to supply in the coming weeks.
The British North Sea port of Hound Point will not load any Forties crude oil on supertankers in early March because of maintenance work on Jetty 1, operator BP said on Tuesday.
Jetty 1, the only loading point for Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) will be unavailable from March 1 to March 12, a spokeswoman for BP said.
In addition, bad weather delayed loadings at Sullom Voe until at least the early hours of Wednesday morning because of high wind, port authority and trade sources said on Tuesday.
Possibly reflecting the short-term disruption to supply, the swaps curve flipped into backwardation, with rates for cargoes loading in one week's time trading above those for loading in two weeks.
The demand front looked gloomier, as supertanker fixtures have slowed since the start of January.
There are, as yet, no VLCCs chartered for loading at Hound Point in February.
There are a handful of Aframaxes, with capacity to carry some 750,000 barrels of oil, scheduled to take Forties to the Mediterranean, but no evidence yet of the kind of offtake from Asian importers that could give differentials a bigger boost.
The VLCC Cerigo had cropped up on the shipping lists as loading in the North Sea, but traders said the fixture had been switched to Rotterdam, while the Nave Electron, which had originally been fixed by Shell to take North Sea crude to Asia, had failed.
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