Middle East

In the trade of Abu Dhabi grades, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) informed its term buyers in Asia that it planned to widen the size of supply cuts for May-loading. Several market sources said that term supplies for Murban an Das were reduced by 15% each, while Umm Lulu and Upper Zakum supplies were slashed by 10% and 5%, respectively. For April loading, all grades were reduced by 5%.

Africa/Europe/Russia/America

The Suez Canal in Egypt has been blocked by the grounding of a large container vessel since Mar 23. Operations to refloat the large vessel have faced difficulties so that it remained unclear whether the Canal transportation would return to normal. Some sources said that the Canal operations would be normalized on Mar 29 at the earliest. If the Suez Canal returns to normal within a few days, the impact on May to June arrival cargoes would be limited, but the woes are protracted, the impact may not be small, some market sources said. Offers for European grades for Asia were temporarily suspended due to the blockage.

Asia Pacific

In the tender related news, PTT Public Co. in Thailand closed its May 25-Jun 10 arrival sweet crude buy tender for the country's petrochemical IRPC on Mar 23 as reported, but PTT eventually did not award any cargoes in the tender. The offer prices apparently were not attractive enough than PTT's price idea. In the by tender, many grades were seen offered such as regional grades like Australian and Malaysian grades and arbitrage grades like African crude.