SINGAPORE- Middle East crude benchmark Dubai edged up on Monday after Shell snapped up as many as seven Upper Zakum cargoes in a single trading session.
The oil major took one Upper Zakum cargo each from Chevron, Petro-Diamond, Reliance, Total and Lukoil based on Dubai partials trades, and bought two floating cargoes from Exxon Mobil at 55 cents a barrel above its official selling price(OSP), traders said.
This brings Shell's total purchase on Platts window this month to 11 Upper Zakum cargoes and one Murban cargo.
Shell also placed a bid for a July-loading Murban cargo at 45 cents a barrel above its OSP, while Total offered a cargo at a premium of 50 cents a barrel.
Brent crude's premium to Dubai swaps rose to $4.05 a barrel by Monday's close, the highest since May 2018, Refinitiv data showed.
The wide price spread could boost Asia's demand for comparatively cheaper Middle East and Russian grades priced on Dubai quotes while weighing on spot premiums for oil from the Asia Pacific and the Atlantic Basin that are priced off Brent.
ASIA-PACIFIC CRUDE: Australian oil and gas company Santos has sold heavy sweet crude Pyrenees at an all-time high premium as traders continued to stock up the oil ahead of a ship fuel change mandate, traders said.
The 600,000-barrel cargo loading in late July was sold to a trading company at a premium close to $15 a barrel above dated Brent, they said.
Pyrenees is one of the handful Australian heavy sweet crude grades that are being sold at record premiums because of strong demand from traders who are storing the low-sulphur oil to prepare for a surge in ship fuel demand when IMO 2020 kicks in.
REFINERY
SK Innovation, owner of South Korea's top refiner SK Energy and petrochemical maker SK Incheon Petrochem, has been replacing Iranian condensate with crude oil from other countries including Qatar and Russia, a top official said.
NEWS
China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia rose 43% last month, making the Middle Eastern OPEC kingpin once again the top supplier to the world's second-biggest economy, boosted by demand from new private refiners.
Saudi imports grew to 6.30 million tonnes, or 1.53 million barrels per day (bpd) on a daily basis, compared with 1.07 million bpd in the year ago period, according to data from the General Administration of Customs released on Saturday.
Renewable energy investment in the Asia-Pacific region will overtake spending on oil and gas exploration by 2020, consultancy Rystad Energy said.
Russia will pump dirty crude oil back from Belarus as it tries to clear a major pipeline of the contaminated oil that has caused the worst ever disruption to its oil exports, sources and officials said.
Total is seeking to sell part of its stake in Kazakhstan's giant Kashagan oilfield to raise up to $4 billion, four banking sources said.
Energy traders Unipec and Vitol placed the lowest offers in a tender by Bangladesh Petroleum Corp to buy nearly 1.35 million tonnes of oil products in the second half of 2019, sources said.
Algeria will block Total from acquiring Anadarko's assets in Algeria, energy minister Mohamed Arkab told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on Sunday.
Canadian midstream company Gibson Energy is loading 60 unit trains per month at the Hardisty, Alberta, crude-by-rail terminal and that will rise to 90 trains per month by the end of the summer, Chief Executive Steve Spaulding said.
(Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu) ((Florence.Tan@thomsonreuters.com; +65 6870 3497; Reuters Messaging: florence.tan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
