Urals Weakens Further in Baltic

Russian Urals crude differentials continued to slide in the Baltic on Thursday amid a flurry of activity with softer refining margins, pushed down by higher oil prices, still keeping buyers at bay.

 

In the Platts window, Statoil bought a 100,000-tonne cargo from Glencore for loadings on Oct. 18-22 in the Baltic at dated Brent minus $2 a barrel, some 20 cents weaker than on Wednesday, traders said.

 

Litasco, Total and Vitol have found no buyers with offers of minus $1.80, $1.75 and $1.85 to dated Brent correspondingly.

 

In the south, Litasco increased its bids for 80,000 and 140,000 cargoes to minus 95 cents and minus $1.20 to dated Brent respectively, without success.

 

The were no deals with both Azeri and CPC Blend in the Platts window.

 

Oil exports through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline via Georgia and Turkey declined by 0.9 percent year-on year to 21.6 million tonnes in the first nine months of 2015 from 21.8 million tonnes in the same period a year ago, a source at Azeri state energy company SOCAR said on Thursday.

 

Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI) and Swiss-based trading house Gunvor said on Thursday they had entered the final stage of talks on the sale of KPI's Europoort refinery in Rotterdam.

 

Goldman Sachs said a rally in oil prices would probably reverse as it had little fundamental support, and the bank reiterated its expectation that prices would likely remain "lower for longer."

 

December-loading Russian Sokol crude has traded at the highest premium in more than a year on robust demand from North Asian refiners, traders said.

 

Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development Co (SODECO) sold a cargo to a South Korean refiner at $5.50 a barrel above Dubai quotes, they said. This is the highest premium since September 2014, Reuters data showed.

 

Oil production at Libya's Arabian Gulf Oil Co (AGOCO) is at 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), and the al-Majida oilfield has reopened with output at around 5,000 bpd after a five-month closure because of worker protests, an AGOCO official said.