SINGAPORE, Oct 9 (Reuters) - The Asia-Pacific crude market held steady on Tuesday with refiners seeking sweet grades for December delivery via tenders while Rosneft offered Sokol for loading in the same month. * TENDERS - Indonesia's Petral issued a tender for the third time seeking sweet crude for December delivery. The tender will close on Wednesday with offers valid until a day later. - Thai refiner IRPC is also seeking sweet crude for December delivery in a tender to close on Wednesday with offers valid until a day later. - Russia's Rosneft offered 700,000 barrels of Sokol for loading on Dec. 20-29. The tender will close on Oct. 10 and bids will remain valid a day later. - PV Oil offered 400,000 barrels of Dai Hung crude for loading on Dec. 24-30 in a tender to close on Oct. 11 with bids valid until Oct. 15. - India's IOC bought 4 million barrels of sweet crude for December loading in its tender. It bought 1 million barrels each of Bonga and Forcados from Shell and 1 million barrels each of Jubilee and Forcados from Vitol. * REFINERY - Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, Japan's fifth-largest oil refiner, said on Tuesday it expects to refine 7.8 million kilolitres of crude oil in the October-December quarter, unchanged from a year earlier. * MARKET NEWS - Imports of West African crude oil by Asian refiners and end-users have reached 1.69 million barrels per day (bpd) this month, up 10 percent from September and at a record high for October, data compiled by Reuters showed. - Rates for dirty tankers on key Asian freight routes are expected to rebound over the next week as seasonal freight demand in the United States and China offsets the oversupply of tankers, ship brokers said. - China's biggest refineries are set to cut the volume of crude oil processed in October by four percent from September, one of this year's biggest monthly reductions, hit by repairs to refineries and outages amid slack demand, a Reuters poll showed. - Insurgents shelled the main city of Sudan's oil-producing South Kordofan state near the border with South Sudan on Monday, both sides said, their first assault on the government stronghold since last year. CRUDE Price Prev Change NOV Brent 112.54 110.81 +1.73 NOV Brent/Dubai EFS DUB-EFS-1M 4.20 3.85 +0.35 PRODUCT CRACKS NOV fuel oil crack -9.69 -8.31 -1.38 NOV gasoil crack 19.58 19.74 -0.16 NOV naphtha crack -7.76 -6.92 -0.84 COMPLEX REFINERY MARGINS Today 9.53 Last 5 days 9.42 Last 365 days 7.38

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