MOSCOW: Urals crude price differentials continued to strengthen on Wednesday on keen buying interest for August-loading cargoes and a quite tight loading plan for early that month.
The schedule for the first 10 days of August was released on Wednesday showing a decrease in Novorossiysk loading compared to the same period in July by 275.000 tonnes, but exports from Baltic ports were 100.000 tonnes longer than in July.
The latest version of Urals preliminary loading plan is available here:. Surgutneftegaz issued a tender Wednesday to sell two Urals cargoes of 100,000 tonnes each loading from Primorsk on August 9-10 and from Ust-Luga on August 6-7. The tender closes on July 21.
Traders said that several August-loading Urals cargoes changed hands in northwest Europe around Brent minus $2 a barrel to BFOE, which was 5 cents stronger than the results of the latest Surgutneftegaz;s tender to sell 500.000 tonnes of Urals.
In the Mediterranean, Urals differentials continued to improve against BFOE as there was little crude oil available in the market for loading in the beginning of August due to maintenance on a pipeline and sellers had to use July resources to satisfy demand for August-loading Urals.
Turkey's Tupras awarded a tender on Tuesday to buy 80,000 or 140,000 tonnes of Urals or Siberian light for arrival to Turkish ports on August 5-10 to Litasco.
According to market participants Litasco sold 140,000 tonnes of Urals loading on July 19-20 to the Turkish refiner at a discount around $1.65 a barrel to BFOE on CIF August basis, which was about 30 cents above recent estimates.
Market participants thought that Tupras payed a premium to the market to secure a cargo at these dates, but assessed 140,000 tonne cargoes with smaller discount to 80,000 tonnes, around 50-60 cents, due to tight availability of bigger cargoes for loading in August.
CPC Blend continued to be extremely volatile due to very different value for cargoes with different loading dates.
In the Platts window Austria's OMV bought 85,000 tonnes of CPC Blend loading from Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka on August 10-14 at a premium to BFOE of $0.70 a barrel from Vitol, traders said.
On Tuesday Trafigura sold CPC Blend cargo of the same size loading on July 31 - August 4 at a discount to BFOE of $0.10 a barrel.
Market participants thought that yesterday's deal was made at a low level due to unsold CPC Blend loading late in July.
August-loading cargoes were assessed significantly higher due to tight loading plan of the grade in that month.
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