Asia-Pacific crude-Vietnam surprises with Bach Ho offer

The Asia-Pacific crude market saw the unexpected arrival of another Vietnamese tender as producers of light sweet grades aim to sell as many cargoes as possible to benefit from high premiums, traders said on Friday.

Vietnam sold April and May cargoes of the Rang Dong and Ruby light sweet grades earlier this week at the biggest premiums in at least a year.

Traders speculate that technical issues at the country’s new Dung Quat refinery kept creating opportunities to export Bach Ho, which used to be Vietnam’s flagship export crude before shipments were diverted to the refinery. The current offer is the second consecutive monthly tender for the grade.

“Bach Ho exports give an indication that they may have not yet solved some technical problems,” a trader said.

*TENDERS

- Vietnam’s state oil marketer PV Oil closed the tender to sell 600,000 to 900,000 barrels of April-loading Bach Ho crude. Last month, Vietnam sold between 550,000 and 600,000 barrels of Bach Ho crude for loading in March.

- CPC bought a 500,000-600,000 barrel cargo of Indonesian Duri crude for April in its latest tender for heavy sweet supplies, a trader said, although this could not be confirmed. Information on price and sellers had not yet emerged.

- Russian oil producer Rosneft offered one cargo of about 700,000 barrels of light sweet Sokol crude oil for May loading in a tender which closed on Friday.

- China’s top refineries will cut crude runs this month by 5.6 percent from record rates in February as plants take turnarounds to trim swelling stocks.

- Twelve major plants accounting for more than a third of China’s total crude run capacity, most of them on the eastern and southern coast, plan to process 2.175 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in March, 161,000 bpd less than February.

- PetroChina (0857.HK) will start work to develop the giant Iraqi oilfield Halfaya in the second half of this year after the newly awarded contract has taken effect, Chairman Jiang Jiemin said on Friday.

*CRACK SPREADS

- Gas oil’s prompt April crack was valued at $9.45 a barrel, up a slender 2 cents from a day ago, as sentiment remained bullish on expectations that demand will remain high in quake-hit Chile.

- Fuel oil’s prompt April crack was valued at a discount of $3.95 a barrel, down 18 cents, and stayed wider than minus $3.00 for nearly a month.

*OUTRIGHT PRICES

- April ICE Brent LCOc1 rose to $78.87 a barrel at 0830 GMT, up 11 cents from the same time a day earlier.

(Reuters)

Tags: Bach Ho, Vietnam oil, Vietnam oil and gas, vietnam oil gas