Middle East Crude

　In trade for Murban, talks for January 2026 loading started. INPEX sold at least one cargo of January-loading Murban. The price was at premiums of 6-9cts to the OSP and the buyer was one trader, according to sources. The price was at the same level as those for December-loading linked to the OSP. One trader in Singapore reckoned that some cargoes of January-loading Murban would be traded around Oct 30-31.

African/European/Russian/American Crude

　In trade for Russian grades, talks for Urals for December arrival in India would be active this weekend. Market sentiment was currently bearish due to weak spot demand from India. Thus, it was widely believed that tradable levels for December arrival in India might be at discounts in the high $2's to Dated Brent or even lower. Following the US request for India to halt purchases of Russian crude, some end-users such as Indian state-owned oil companies and independent oil refiner Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) were expected to gradually reduce their imports of Russian crude.

Asia Pacific Crude

　October loadings for Ichthys condensate in Australia were delayed. A production outage cropped up in the 8.90 mil mt/year Ichthys LNG project after maintenance. In the LNG project, a breakdown at the heat exchanger in the No2 train was witnessed, suspending the operation in the train. Production for the condensate was reduced to about half of normal time, thus loadings of Ichthys condensate, associated product for LNG, appeared to be delayed by up to two weeks, according to an end-user in Northeast Asia. In the project, field maintenance was finished on Oct 8 after starting on Aug 18.