Monday, 16 March 2015 17:38
SINGAPORE: The Middle East crude market remained supported on Monday, with al-Shaheen traded at narrower discounts, reflecting firm demand in Asia.
Tasweeq has sold two al-Shaheen cargoes via its monthly tender at $ 1.46 a barrel below Dubai quotes on average, traders said, against a discount of $ 1.60 in the previous month. The buyers were not immediately known.
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The discounts for the two cargoes were likely at opposite ends of the $ 1-$ 2 range. Discounts fetched for cargoes sold just before the tender were also seen in a wide range, from 80 cents to $ 1.90 a barrel, a trader said.
Qatar Marine has also sold out for May at 20-35 cents a barrel above its official selling price (OSP), traders said, at slightly lower premiums than the previous month due to an increase in its monthly price.
Fuji Oil bought a May-loading Murban cargo from Itochu via a tender at a premium of about 31 cents a barrel to its OSP, traders said. The Japanese refiner also purchased an Upper Zakum cargo from Total at 35-40 cents a barrel above its OSP, they said. The deals could not be independently verified.
DME OMAN
DME Oman for May settled at $ 52.44 a barrel, down $ 2.49, at 0830 GMT. This puts DME Oman at 52 cents a barrel below Dubai swaps, against a discount of 46 cents in the previous session.
On the window, Shell and Mercuria sold at least 18 July Dubai partials to Unipec at $ 53.15, widening the May/July spread to more than $ 1.
MARKET NEWS
A supertanker carrying about 1 million barrels of Middle
East crude docked on Monday at a terminal jointly run by Vopak and Dialog Group in Malaysia, the companies said. The arrival of tanker MT Mesdar marked the start of operations at southeast Asia’s first commercial crude oil tank farm.
The tanker had been chartered by CSSA, the shipping arm of French oil major Total, and it loaded the crude cargo at Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates in February, Reuters shipping data showed.
Oil prices have started to stabilise around $ 60 a barrel in past weeks and will continue to firm up, while crude demand will grow stronger, an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Sunday.
The chief financial officer of commodities firm Trafigura, Pierre Lorinet, who led the trading house’s relocation to Singapore from Switzerland in 2012, is stepping down from October, Trafigura said.
South Korea imported 557,174 tonnes of crude oil from Iran in February, down 50.4 percent from a year ago, preliminary data from Korea Customs Service showed on Sunday.
Copyright Reuters, 2015
