London --
A vast number of Angolan cargoes remain to be sold for February as a trading crunch looms
following the holidays.
* Around half of Angola’s 38 cargoes have yet to be sold, traders said, after buyers assessed asking prices which met and exceeded 2019 highs in December to be far too high.
* State oil company Sonangol still sought to sell around four spot cargoes for which it had lowered prices on Thursday with Dalia being offered at dated Brent $2.50.
* China’s Unipec took the rare move of offering multiple cargoes it had been assigned in term allocations Platts window, including of Plutonio, Hungo and Saturno.
* Backwardation, stubbornly high freight rates and lackluster margins along with slow trading over the holidays had largely halted trading.
* One trader said that on the second day of trading for the new year, many sellers assessed that the market was sluggish and held off on signaling price indications for an unusually high number of cargoes.
* Traders awaited the result of a tender by India’s HPCL which closed on New Year’s Eve and South Africa’s Sasol announced a tender for February-loading crude.
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* Total said on Friday that its four French refineries – at Donges, Feyzin, Normandie-Gonfreville and Grandpuits – were functioning and producing output, even as a nationwide strike in the country shows no signs of abating.
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– Reuters
