A man walks past a Reliance Industries Limited sign board installed on a road divider in Gandhinagar in Gujarat, India.
Singapore: The Middle East crude benchmark Dubai fell on yesterday as demand for February-loading cargoes thinned after refiners had mostly secured their feedstock requirements.
Five Dubai partials traded during the Platts window, with Indian private refiner Reliance the seller of all the cargoes.
Reliance sold a Dubai partial each to Vitol, Shell and SK Energy, and two partials to Hartree, traders said. The partials were traded between $51.80 and $51.90 a barrel, they added.
Trade on the sour crude market has now shifted to the Russia Asia-Pacific ESPO Blend grade as more February offers for the crude are emerging.
Greater clarity on February ESPO crude premiums are expected to emerge today as Russian producer Surgutneftegas is due to award its sell tender for four 740,000-barrel cargoes of the grade then.
February ESPO values have risen amid expectations that supplies in the month will be lower than in January.
Russia plans to cut ESPO crude exports from the Pacific port of Kozmino in February by approximately 450,000 tonnes to 2.25 million tonnes, market sources told Reuters late on Wednesday.
Loadings will be lower due to planned maintenance of the ESPO pipeline which may start in February and continue in March,traders said.
Indonesian state energy firm Pertamina aims to finish a $5bn upgrade to the Cilacap oil refinery in Central Java in2021, one year earlier than its previous target, its chief executive said yesterday.
Production at the major Libyan oilfield of Sharara reached 58,000 barrels on Wednesday as operations gradually resumed after the lifting of a two-year pipeline blockade, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) said. Nigerian oil workers at ExxonMobil have decided to end a strike over sackings of staff after earlier agreeing to halt crude oil production, a union official said on Wednesday.
Malaysia's state oil firm Petroliam Nasional Berhad inked a deal to study two oilfields in Iran with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
Petroleo Brasileiro SA said on Wednesday it would sell $2.2bn worth of assets to France's Total SA, including stakes in oilfields and two thermal power stations. China's November crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia jumped nearly 30 percent from the year before, customs data showed yesterday, with the kingdom overtaking Russia to become the largest crude supplier to the world's second largest economy. Sinochem Hongrun Petrochemical Co Ltd, a Shandong-based independent refiner and fuel exporter, plans to open a Singapore trading office early next year, the latest of China's so-called "teapot" refiners to seek a presence in the global oil market.
