Asia-Pacific Crude-Market focuses on outstanding tenders

SINGAPORE: Activity on the Asia-Pacific market was muted on Thursday with traders focusing their attention on tender awards that are due on June 2.

Thai refiner IRPC is due to award its sweet crude import tender in the coming days after closing the tender to purchase crude for July 15-August 10 delivery on Thursday.

Vietnamese state-marketer PV Oil is likely to have awarded its July Bunga Kekwa and Bunga Orkid crude cargoes to Gunvor at premiums in the high-$2.00 per barrel to dated Brent.

The official selling price of a basket of Malaysian crude oil for May loading has been set at $53.63 a barrel, the lowest since last November, Malaysian state oil firm Petronas said on Thursday.

BRENT-DUBAI EFS

Brent's premium to Dubai swaps was at $0.70 per barrel for August.

MARKET NEWS

Dubai crude, as quoted by price-reporting agency Platts, averaged at $50.537 a barrel for May, the lowest since November, traders said on Thursday.

Li Chuang, former head of crude oil trading at Chinese state energy giant PetroChina Co Ltd, has joined Geneva-based independent commodities trading house Mercuria as Asia head of its crude oil business, trading sources briefed on Li's move said.

The trading arm of oil giant Saudi Aramco is looking to step up hiring for its Singapore office as it pushes into the regional energy hub, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Russia could increase oil production next year to as much as 551 million tonnes, or 11.07 million barrels per day (bpd), and will begin testing a new tax regime to support output growth, Alexei Texler, first deputy energy minister, told Reuters.

Rosneft boss Igor Sechin and Saudi Aramco chief Amin Nasser held their first formal, scheduled meeting - going beyond the numerous times they had simply encountered each other at oil events around the world.

Their conversation also broke new ground, according to two sources familiar with the talks in the Saudi city of Dhahran last week who said the CEOs discussed possible ways of cooperating in Asia, such as Indonesia and India, as well as in other markets.

OPEC, NON-OPEC NEWS

Iraq's Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi appointed a new deputy for upstream operations on Thursday as part of an overhaul meant to bolster the OPEC member's ability to boost crude output capacity, a ministry spokesman said.

OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said on Thursday at an economic forum in Russia's St Petersburg that it was too early to say when production caps could be imposed on Libya and Nigeria as they have a lot of issues to solve.