Middle East Crude

　In trade for October-loading Qatari condensates, Qatar Energy (QE) was likely to have limited room to sell D.F.C. and L.S.C., similar to September-loading. Condensate splitters were still running at high operation rates in Qatar where temperatures remained high so that QE would prefer supplying condensate to these domestic condensate splitters. In regard with September-loading, QE had sold two cargoes of L.S.C. but QE had skipped selling D.F.C via negotiations.

African/European/Russian/American Crude

　China's Rongsheng Petrochemical bought four cargoes (each 550,000barrels)of Canadian Access Western Blend (AWB) in total via a tender for November arrival that had been closed last week. These cargoes would be loaded into Aframax vessels which could accommodate 600,000barels at maximum. The sellers were Briton's BP, US Phillips, US Conoco Philipps and European Vitol. The prices were at premiums of $6.00-6.50 to December or January ICE Brent. Regarding AWB, Ronghsheng Petrochemical had purchased spot cargoes in July. Further, several end-users in Asia such as Chinese companies pondered buying.

Asia Pacific Crude

　 In trade for October-loading Vietnamese grades, Petro Vietnam Oil Corp (PV OIL) floated a Chim Sao sell tender. Through the tender that would be closed on August 12 at 9:00 Vietnam time, PV OIL was trying to sell two cargoes (each 300,000barrels) for Sep 29-Oct 3 loading and Oct 22-26 loading. As for Chim Sao, PV Oil had sold only one September-loading cargo. Nevertheless, the company would sell two October-loading cargoes. Thus, one trader in Singapore reckoned that market sentiment might weaken on plentiful supply and thus the awarded price for October-loading Chim Sao was likely to be lower than that for September-loading. Besides, the market for US light grades, mainly WTI Midland, had recently declined, which was also regarded as a bearish factor.