Middle East Crude

In trade for Abu Dhabi grades, some players that had spot demand moved on buying large volumes in the final round of talks for July-loading. Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) bought 2mil barrels of July-loading Murban for August arrival via a tender. HPCL seemed to have bought the cargoes amid a sense that the value of Murban was attractive relative to WTI Midland. Meanwhile, PTT Public Co. apparently sold the cargoes to HPCL. PTT sold the cargoes of 2mil barrels of Murban to HPCL on behalf of PetroChina that held the cargoes, following the previous month, according to sources.

African/European/Russian/American Crude

In the trade of Russian grades, about 10 cargoes (each about 720,000bbls) of East Siberian ESPO Blend were heard placed to end-users in India. The prices were heard at premiums of close to $1.00 to Dubai quotes on CFR India. ESPO had been mainly placed to China recently and no deals had been done for India. The background for some of July arrival ESPO diverting to India was unclear, but end-users in China increased intakes of Middle Eastern term cargoes led by Saudi Arabia and may have reduced procurements of ESPO. In addition, a fire broke out at Sinopec's 470,000 barrels per day (b/d) Maoming refinery last week, and the crude distillation unit (CDU) at the refinery was said to be shut. "The move may affect demand for not only ESPO but also overall demand from China," said a trader in Singapore.

Asia Pacific Crude

In tender-related news, Indonesia's state-owned Pertamina bought NWSC for Jul 25-29 loading from Briton's Shell via a condensate buy tender for August arrival to the country's petrochemical firm TPPI. The price was said to have been at premiums in the $2's to Dated Brent on a CFR basis. Through the tender closed on May 21 with offers valid until May 23, Pertamina was trying to buy 600,000barrels for Aug 1-3 arrival and 300,000barrels for Aug 12-14 arrival. n trade for July-loading Australian grades, BP still moved on selling Cossack. Nevertheless, there were few active buyers in the market in end-May, and thus talks prolonged. Some Australian end-users such as Ampol are usually keen to purchase Cossack. These end-users, however, did not show interest in spot purchase. Ampol planned to conduct maintenance at a production facility at its Lytton refinery (with production capacity of 104,000 barrels per day), as reported earlier. Thus, the company held no room to buy Cossack.