LONDON: Unplanned outages around the world boosted offers for both Angolan and Nigerian cargoes, but traders said the West African market remained well supplied despite shortfalls elsewhere.
Force majeure in Libya, sliding output in Venezuela, an outage in Canada, lower anticipated supply from the North Sea and a spate of shortfalls in Nigeria itself have fed into strength in offers for cargoes loading in July and August.
But this has not yet been met with increased demand from potential buyers, who remain wary of taking cargoes at what appear to be high premiums given the wide availability of prompt-loading crude.
ANGOLA
* ExxonMobil was offering August-loading Girassol at dated Brent plus 60 cents a barrel, as well as a cargo of CLOV, at a premium of 40 cents, traders said.
* Around 20 cargoes were said to be available from the August programme, which is the smallest in nearly 12 years, traders said.
* Chevron was offering an August-loading cargo of Cabinda at dated Brent minus 40 cents a barrel. The company was also offering Nemba.
NIGERIA
* Total has bought a number of cargoes of Qua Iboe. Exxon and Mercuria, among others, were believed to be selling. Qua Iboe was last heard to be offered at a premium of $2.00 to dated Brent, traders said.
* Other Nigerian grades such as Bongo and Yoho were also offered around the same level. Given the shortages in availability of Bonny Light, Usan and, to an extent, Forcados, traders said diffs were heading higher.
* About a dozen July-loading cargoes of Nigerian crude were still thought to be available for sale.
* Traders believe Bonny Light crude could resume flowing through the Nembe Creek Trunk line towards the middle of this week. But force majeure remained in place and one trader said there had been no sign of any offers for Bonny cargoes .
RELATED NEWS
* President Hassan Rouhani appeared on Tuesday to threaten to disrupt oil shipments from neighbouring countries if Washington presses ahead with its goal of forcing all countries to stop buying Iranian oil.
* A London judge ordered Tullow Oil to pay rig owner Seadrill around $254 million saying Tullow was wrong to end a rig contract in Ghana on grounds of force majeure over a maritime dispute, Tullow said on Tuesday.
* Russia’s Rosneft has issued a tender to sell Urals and CPC Blend crude oil from Russian ports in October 2018 – March 2019, according to tender documents published on Rosneft’s website.
* Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) declared force majeure on loadings from Zueitina and Hariga ports, resulting in total production losses of 850,000 barrels per day (bpd) due to the closure of eastern fields and ports.
TENDERS
* India’s MRPL bought its first cargo of Iraqi Basra Heavy crude from Shell via a tender at a discount of $1.20 a barrel to the Dubai benchmark price, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.
* India’s IOC issued a new tender to buy crude loading in early September that closes late on Wednesday.
Source: Brecorder
