A widening in the margins between light and heavy distillates buoyed demand for light crude, while a 10-day delay in Russian Sokol loadings in March supported premiums, traders said.
Spot Das crude supplies are also missing from the March market as ADNOC has yet to renew oil concessions with upstream partners in the ADMA-ADCO joint venture, they said.
However, March premiums for Middle East light grades are down from the highs seen in February as producers have raised official selling prices (OSPs).
UAE: Fuji Oil bought two March-loading cargoes of Murban at 20-25 cents above its OSP via a tender, traders said. Sellers were not immediately known. Last week, JXTG bought two cargoes of the same grade at about 17 cents above its OSP.
QATAR: Itochu has sold a March-loading cargo of Qatar Land at a small premium to its OSP to an unknown buyer, traders said.
BAHRAIN: BAPCO issued a tender offering March-loading Banoco Arab Medium. The producer is expected to award on Wednesday a tender for a February-loading cargo.
RUSSIA: Surgutneftegaz has offered two ESPO cargoes loading in late February to early March in a tender to close on Tuesday. ExxonMobil will close a tender on Thursday to sell up to two Sokol cargoes. Sakhalin Energy will also sell its cargoes this week.
IRAN: India was scheduled to lift its biggest volume of Iranian crude in nine months in December, helping to shore up the OPEC producer's oil exports to Asia last month, said a person with knowledge of the country's tanker loading schedule.
Asian buyers were scheduled to lift 1.92 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude in December, down 7 percent from the actual loadings in the previous month, the source said.
India's scheduled crude oil loadings from Iran, excluding condensate, an ultra-light oil, were about 550,000 bpd last month, up 78 percent from the previous month and the highest since March, according to the source.
December also marked Petronas' first purchase of Iranian crude since the Malaysian state oil firm halted Iranian oil imports in 2012 after Western sanctions targeting Tehran's nuclear programme made it difficult to pay and ship the oil, according to the person.
Petronas bought Iranian Heavy crude in a spot deal, two other sources familiar with the matter said.
The tanker Patmos Warrior is discharging close to 300,000 barrels of crude at the Malaysian port of Malacca after loading in Iran, trade flow data on Thomson Reuters Eikon showed.