SINGAPORE: More offers for September-loading Vietnamese crude have been released even as the market has shifted its focus toward October supplies.
Vietnam's state-marketer PV Oil launched a sell tender for Song Doc crude late on Tuesday, to the surprise of market participants. Vietnamese sell tenders are typically issued early in the month and concluded about a week before the end of the month.
VIETNAM
SONG DOC: PV Oil is offering a 200,000 barrel cargo of the grade for Sept. 29-Oct. 1 loading in a tender that closes on August 4 and with validity to August 11. The Vietnamese grade is not offered regularly due to its limited production. PV Oil last sold a June-loading cargo of the grade to Shell at a low-$1.00 per barrel premium to dated Brent in April.
RANG DONG: PV Oil closed its October-March term sell tender on Wednesday. The firm is offering 6,700 barrels of the grade per day. Bids will have validity until August 16. Its previous April-September term tender was awarded to Unipec at around $1.80 per barrel above dated Brent in February.
Vietnam's crude oil production will fall at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the next five years, as low oil prices weigh on new project investments that are needed to offset output declines at mature existing fields, BMI Research said.
INDONESIA
IMPORT TENDER: Indonesian state-controlled Pertamina launched a tender seeking October-December loading supplies of domestic crude and condensate. The tender closes on August 7 and will have validity until August 14.
Pertamina shortlisted 21 grades in the tender, including key crude grades like Minas, Banyu Urip, Cinta and Widuri among others. It is also seeking condensates like Senipah, Tangguh and Bontang Return Condensate.
JULY ICP: The official Indonesia Crude Price (ICP) for Minas crude oil has been set at $46.35 a barrel for July, rebounding from a 7-month low in June, a document from the Ministry of Energy & Mineral Resources showed on Wednesday. The Minas ICP was up $1.64 per barrel from June levels, while the Minas alpha was set at minus $2.21 per barrel to benchmark dated Brent, down 40 cents from June.
BRENT-DUBAI EFS
Brent's premium to Dubai swaps <DUB-EFS-1M> was at $1 per barrel, down 7 cents for October.
REFINERY
A fire occurred at an electrical substation at South Korea's second-largest oil refinery early on Wednesday, a spokesman from plant operator GS Caltex Corp said. The company stopped operations at its No.2 aromatics plant which is serviced by the fire-hit substation, a company spokesman said.
Royal Dutch Shell said on Tuesday the earliest restart expected for Europe's largest oil refinery is the second half of August. Shell shut most units at the 404,000-barrels-per-day (bpd) Pernis refinery in the Netherlands following a power outage caused by a fire on the evening of July 29.
MARKET NEWS
Venezuela's supply of heavy crude to US independent refiner Phillips 66 has dropped by more than two-thirds this year in part due to quality problems, and the company has cancelled at least one cargo in recent months, according to sources from state-run oil company PDVSA.
Philadelphia Energy Solutions LLC, the owner of the largest US East Coast oil refining complex, has hired an investment bank to help tackle its debt burden, as it struggles with low profit margins, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Malaysian state energy firm Petronas said on Wednesday it has been awarded a shallow water block in the Mexican portion of the Gulf of Mexico that it will operate jointly with Colombia's Ecopetrol.
OPEC, NON-OPEC NEWS
Russian oil output stood at 10.95 million barrels per day (bpd) in July, unchanged from June, Energy Ministry data showed on Wednesday.
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