Middle East Crude

In trade for Qatari grades, State-owned Qatar Energy (QE) sold a total of three cargoes of Al Shaheen- Dec 1-2, 16-17 and 27-28 loading via its tender closed on October 14. Those cargoes were awarded at premiums of 50-55cts to Dubai quotes. As for the winners, Glencore took two cargoes and British BP secured one cargo. Elsewhere, the term price for December-loading Al Shaheen was set at a premium of 54cts to Dubai quotes, down sharply from the previous month's premium of $3.61 to Dubai quotes.

African/European/Russian/American Crude

Indian Oil Corp (IOC) purchased South American grades via a tender for sweet crude oil for January arrival. IOC bought Brazilian Tupi and Atapi from Brazil's state-owned Petrobras. In addition, IOC procured Guyana's Golden Arrowhead from US Exxon Mobile. Nevertheless, the prices of these cargoes were currently unknown.
Meanwhile, players such as Petrobras, which hold Brazilian crude cargoes, were keen on offering cargoes to end-users in India. This came after the US Treasury Department had sanctioned Rizhao Port in China's Shandong Province for its involvement in disguising Iranian crude imports last week.

Asia Pacific Crude

A fire and explosion broke out at the 100,000 barrels per day (b/d) Tuban refinery in Tuban, East Java in Indonesia owned by Indonesia's Pertamina on Thursday. The fire was seen caused by a glitch at a pump of a petrochemical processing unit. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. The extent of damage to production facilities and the impact on shipments were unknown at this stage. But depending on future development, "Pertamina might need to sell October-arrival condensates that they purchased for TPPI," said an energy firm in Northeast Asia. TPPI normally injects condensates such as Australian NWSC and Malaysia's Bintulu condensate and heavy naphtha in the Tuban refinery to produce petrochemical feedstocks such as Benzene.