30 November 2013, London – Royal Dutch Shell Plc sold North Sea Forties crude at a higher level than the last trade on Nov. 19. There were no bids or offers for Russian Urals, while Vitol Group didn’t manage to sell Nigerian Qua Iboe in the Platts pricing window.
Loadings of three Forties crude cargoes were advanced by one to five days, according to two people with knowledge of the loading program, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.
North Sea
Shell sold to BP Plc Forties for loading Dec. 16 to Dec. 18 at a 55-cent a barrel premium to Dated Brent, according to a Bloomberg survey of traders and brokers monitoring the Platts window. That’s 45 cents more than the Nov. 19 trade between Shell and Total SA.
Shell also offered the U.K. grade for Dec. 10 to Dec. 12 at Dated Brent plus 20 cents, while withdrawing an offer for Dec. 13 to Dec. 15 at a premium of 30 cents.
Petroineos, a joint venture between PetroChina Co. and Ineos Group AG, offered Dec. 9 to Dec. 11 Forties at 30 cents more than the benchmark.
There were no bids or offers for Oseberg, Ekofisk or Brent in the Platts window.
Brent for January settlement traded at $110.77 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange at the close of the window, compared with $110.71 in the previous session. The February contract was at $110.31, a discount of 46 cents to January.
Forties F1214 and F1216 will now load one day earlier on Dec. 20 to Dec. 22 and Dec. 23 to Dec. 25, respectively. Lot F1215 is scheduled for Dec. 17 to Dec. 19, five days ahead of the original shipping plan.
The U.K.’s Huntington field is to return to maximum capacity of about 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by the end of the year, stakeholder Norwegian Energy Co. said in its third quarter results today. Production was restricted to about 12,500 barrels since Sept. 9 and gradually increased since the beginning of this month. The field’s output is currently about 23,000 barrels a day, Noreco said.
Urals/Mediterranean
OAO Surgutneftegas is offering three Urals crude cargoes in a tender closing tomorrow. The company is offering two 100,000-ton cargoes for loading Dec. 22 to Dec. 23 from Primorsk and Dec. 24 to Dec. 25 from Ust-Luga, according to two people who received the tender document, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.
The company is also offering 140,000 tons of Urals for loading from Novorossiysk on Dec. 27 to Dec. 28. The position was unallocated in the final loading program released yesterday.
West Africa
Vitol failed to sell 950,000 barrels of Qua Iboe for loading Dec. 19 to Dec. 20 from Nigeria at $1.95 a barrel premium to Dated Brent, the survey showed.
Refiner Indian Oil Corp. bought 1 million barrels each of Bonny Light and EA grade from Shell via a tender, according to two people who participate in the market, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential. The company has bought a total of 9 million barrels of Nigerian crudes for loading in January.
*Laura Hurst, lhurst3@bloomberg.net; Sherry Su in London at lsu23@bloomberg.net and Stephen Voss, sev@bloomberg.net
