Nigerian oil differentials were reported to have held at six-week lows, with traders pointing to an overhang of nearly 30 million barrels of unsold oil from the June and July programmes. Traders estimated that between 25 million-28 million barrels were still unsold from the past two to three months because of a lack of buying interest from U.S. and European refiners. “I’m very pleased I’m not long West African oil at the moment,” said a trader. Sales into Asian tenders could help reduce the oil overhang, but traders said strict participation terms could reduce the number of available suppliers and block sales. “Petral is only tendering to a few companies so is likely to get few offers,” the trader said, adding the request for specific dates as part of Taiwan’s CPC tender would make it difficult to nominate cargoes.
About 15-20 Nigerian cargoes remained unsold from July but several cargoes were never placed for June, traders said. They assessed Qua Iboe for July at a $1.70 premium to benchmark dated Brent, unchanged from Monday and the lowest in about six weeks.
According to the report, Indonesia’s Pertamina has issued a tender to buy sweet
crude for August delivery. The tender will close on Wednesday and the result is expected to be released on Thursday. Also Pertamina typically buys Nigerian crude oil via monthly
tender for sweet crude. Taiwanese oil refiner CPC Corp has issued a tender to buy sweet crude for August loading. The tender will close on Tuesday. CPC typically buys Angolan crude in its monthly tender to import sweet crude. It bought 6 million barrels of Angolan. The import tender for August loading by India’s BPCL will
close later this week.
