TOKYO: Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, will supply full contracted volumes of crude oil in January to at least three Asian term buyers, unchanged from December, industry sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Saudi did not offer additional volumes on top of the contractual volumes to the three buyers, though it has boosted output to over 10 million barrels per day (bpd) to feed increased demand from consuming countries.
The steady allocations raise the chance that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is not expected to widely alter output policy at its Dec. 14 meeting.
At least one of the buyers said it may lower purchase volumes, after Saudi raised January premiums on its oil to record levels.
The overall rise in the cost of crude from the world's top exporting region to Asia would drive down profits that refiners make for processing oil.
Saudi Arabia made no changes to the operational tolerance in the supply allocation, giving buyers the option of asking for cargoes to be loaded with up to 10 percent more or less crude than contracted.
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