Brent-Dubai Exchange of Futures for Swaps (EFS) <DUB-EFS-1M>, or Brent's premium to Dubai swaps, narrowed 58 cents to $1.22 a barrel, the lowest in nearly four years.
India's ONGC sold 700,000 barrels of light sweet Sokol crude loading over Oct. 2-5 to Glencore at less than $5 a barrel above the Oman/Dubai average, traders said, although the details could not be independently verified.
The company last sold a Sokol cargo loading in mid-September at a premium of around $7 a barrel, according to Reuters data.
Russia's Rosneft offered 730,000 barrels of ESPO crude loading over Sept. 25-28 in a tender that closes on Aug. 5 with a two-day validity.
The tender comes in addition to the 22 ESPO cargoes that were initially planned for exports from Russia's Kozmino port in September.
Exports are expected to rise to 2.5 million tonnes, or 25 cargoes, in the month due to a fire at Rosneft's Achinsk refinery in June.
REFINERY
A fire broke out at a PetroChina refinery and petrochemical plant on Monday but was later put out and no casualties were reported, government and company officials said.
JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, Japan's biggest oil refiner, said it restarted the 110,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) No.3 crude distillation unit (CDU) at Mizushima-B refinery on Monday as planned after scheduled maintenance.
MARKET NEWS
State oil giant PetroChina plans to pay the more than $1 billion it needs to complete a takeover of the Dover oil sands project from Canadian firm Athabasca Oil Corp by the end of September, a person with knowledge of the deal told Reuters.
An ally of Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia's business elite would not put pressure him to change tack on Ukraine due to Western sanctions which would only strengthen support for the president's policies.
Iraq's oil exports increased in July to an average of 2.442 million barrels per day (bpd) from 2.423 in the previous month, the oil ministry said on Monday.
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