Middle East crude rebounded yesterday, with Shell receiving another three cargoes of Upper Zakum and Oman oil through trades on Platts window.
Cash Dubai’s premium to swaps rose 30 cents from the previous session to $1.80 a barrel while DME Oman’s premium to Dubai swaps was up 11 cents to $1.53 a barrel.
Shell has bought a total 15mn barrels of Middle East crude for loading in August through deals on pricing platforms Platts and RIM during this month, according to trade sources and data collected by Reuters.
This would be the largest purchase by a single company through pricing platforms since August 2015 when Chinaoil, PetroChina’s trading arm, bought 39mn barrels of Middle East crude, sources said.
Shell’s purchases include 18 cargoes of Upper Zakum, seven Murban cargoes, four Oman cargoes and one cargo of Das Blend.
Shell’s strong demand has underpinned spot premiums for August-loading cargoes even though demand has weakened from the previous month due to poor refining margins in Asia, traders said.
IRAN: Asia’s crude oil imports from Iran fell in May to the lowest in at least five years after China and India wound down purchases amid US sanctions, while Japan and South Korea halted imports, data from government and trade sources showed.
Total imports from Asia’s top four buyers came to 386,021 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude in May, down 78.5% from a year ago to the lowest monthly level since the data began to be collected by Reuters in 2014.
RUSSIA: Rosneft awarded a spot tender this week to sell two cargoes of 100,000 tonnes each of ESPO Blend crude oil loading from Far East Kozmino port on August 1-6 and 10-15 to China’s Chemchina at premiums of $3.80-3.90 per barrel to August Dubai swaps, traders said.
Rosneft is also tendering to sell a cargo loading from Kozmino on August 25-31, which may be awarded on June 28, traders said.
China has banned imports of crude oil containing more than 10 parts per million (ppm) of organic chloride, a contaminant that can damage refining equipment, the country’s General Administration of Customs said in a faxed statement on Friday.
ASIA-PACIFIC: Shell has sold an August-loading cargo of Prelude condensate to a trading company, a trader said.
The price was not immediately known but was likely to be lower than Ichthys condensate which have been sold at 50 cents a barrel above dated Brent, he added.
Vietnam’s first-half crude oil exports were seen rising 6.4% from the same period last year to an estimated 2mn tonnes. Crude oil export revenue in January to June is expected to fall 1.7% to $1.03bn.
Exxon Mobil Corp has hired former Trafigura crude oil trader Hong Hsien Tan to further boost its trading capabilities in Singapore, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
Tan is expected to join the company on July 1, they said, and he will be the company’s third external hire for its Singapore crude oil trading team since July 2018. Exxon also plans to relocate a trader from the United States to the Singapore office to handle trading of low-sulphur crude, including US oil, the sources said. It was not immediately clear when this trader will join the Singapore team.
Opec is expected to roll over a deal on cutting supplies at a meeting next week and discuss deepening the curbs that have been in place since January 1, Iraq’s oil minister said.
Iran’s main demand in talks aimed at saving its nuclear deal is to be able to sell its oil at the same levels that it did before Washington withdrew from the accord a year ago, an Iranian official said.
The government of Alberta, Canada’s main crude-producing province, eased crude oil production curtailments for August on Thursday, setting the limit at 3.74mn barrels per day, compared with 3.71mn bpd in July. Plains All American Pipeline LP’s 670,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Cactus II oil pipeline system from the Permian basin to the Corpus Christi, Texas area will commence line fill within a week, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Trade tensions risk throwing the global economy’s transition to greener energy into disarray and could hurt energy companies’ preparations towards it, BP chairman Helge Lund said as leaders of the world’s largest economies gather for talks in Japan.
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